Roy Keane Ready to go Dutch (or German or Italian or Whatever)

One of the likable things about Roy Keane the manager is that he’s always willing hold his hands up and say “my bad.” Sunderland’s start to the season hasn’t been horrible – they’re not in the bottom three tonight – but it hasn’t been too encouraging either. The 3-1 loss to West Ham today leaves the Black Cats with just one win in the nine games since beating Spurs in the 90th minute on opening day. Keane says maybe he made a mistake in sticking with what he knows this summer, basically signing players who are any combination of Irish, former Manchester United teammates or did well in the Championship last year. Now Keane’s willing to go the Sven and Wenger route and look for players abroad.

“It’s been a difficult start and I’d be a lot happier if we had a few more points,” said Keane. “Of course we need to strengthen in January. We need a bigger and a stronger squad and we need more than one or two players.”

“We’ve no problem competing with clubs in terms of spending money but we’ll possibly change our (buying) approach from the summer where our lack of experience (in European recruitment) possibly came in. We wanted to buy players we knew about because knowing about a player’s character traits is vital.

“I wouldn’t say we ignored Europe in the summer, we did discuss it but we just felt we needed a certain type of player we knew about.”

The other problem with signing domestic players is that they don’t come cheap. Michael Chopra is a nice little player, but he cost £5 million of Niall Quinn’s friend’s money. Kieran Richardson cost £5.5 million and Kenwyne Jobes (who actually looks useful) was about £6.5 million. Likewise Craig Gordon, who cost £7 million up front, rising to £9 million based on appearances. All solid players, but none of them quite good enough to lead a team up the Premiership table. Consider the cost of these players against what Sven has done at Man City this summer, signing a little genius like Elano for just £8 million or so, and the benefits of European scouting are pretty obvious.

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Category: English Premier League, World Football