Keane blasts ‘p****’ Sir Alex and reveals heated Manchester United exit

• Posted on October 7, 2014
• by Nana Kwesi Coomson
• Comment

The ex-Red Devils captain rowed with his boss shortly before he left the club in 2005 while he also fought with Peter Schmeichel during a pre-season tour of Asia

Former Manchester United captain Roy Keane has labelled Sir Alex Ferguson a ‘f****** p****’ after revealing the truth surrounding his exit from Old Trafford.

The Republic of Ireland international left the Red Devils in 2005 to join Celtic despite being one of the club’s most successful captains as he won seven Premier League titles, four FA Cups and the Champions League under Ferguson.

But in his new book, The Second Half, Keane reveals that, following an argument with assistant manager Carlos Queiroz and a controversial interview on MUTV, his relationship with Ferguson broke down and that the veteran coach threatened to rip up his contract.

“I said to Ferguson, ‘Can I play for somebody else?’ And he said, ‘Yeah you can, cos we’re tearing up your contract’,” he writes.

“So I thought, ‘All right – I’ll get fixed up.’ I knew there’d be clubs in for me when the news got out. I said, ‘Yeah – I think we have come to the end.’

“I just thought, ‘F****** p****’ – and I stood up and went ‘Yeah. I’m off.”

Keane, meanwhile, has also admitted to an altercation with former team-mate Peter Schmeichel which left the goalkeeper with a black eye.

The pair came to blows during a pre-season tour of Asia in 1998, though the 43-year-old revealed there was alcohol involved.

“He [Schmeichel] said, ‘I’ve had enough of you, It’s time we sorted this out.’ So I said ‘Okay’ and we had a fight. It felt like 10 minutes. There was a lot of noise – Peter’s a big lad.

“I woke up the next morning. I kind of vaguely remembered the fight. My hand was really sore and one of my fingers was bent backwards.

“The manager had a go at us as we were getting on the bus, and people were going on about a fight in the hotel the night before. It started coming back to me – the fight between me and Peter.

“In the meantime, Nicky Butt had been filling me in on what had happened the night before. Butty had refereed the fight. Anyway, Peter had grabbed me, I’d head-butted him – we’d been fighting for ages.

“At the press conference, Peter took his sunglasses off. He had a black eye. The questions came at him: ‘Peter, what happened to your eye?”

By Tom Maston