United push panic button after Keane’s video nasty
Posted in News on Monday October 31st, 2005 11:56pm
Oliver Kay in The Times:
It had seemed a recipe for disaster when MUTV announced that Keane had been nominated for its Play the Pundit feature to analyse the catastrophic 4-1 defeat by Middlesbrough on Saturday. In the event, the interview took place as planned, with the injured captain dissecting one of the team’s worst performances during Sir Alex Ferguson’s tenure, but the content was so shocking that MUTV’s management deemed it “unbroadcastable”, a verdict with which David Gill, the chief executive, agreed.
Suspicions were raised when the programme, which was to be screened at 6.30pm, disappeared from the schedule list an hour beforehand, to be replaced by Gary Neville Plays the Pundit. In the end, Neville’s thoughts were not forthcoming either, with MUTV instead showing a half-hour feature on their youth academy. Peter Brookes, the station’s managing director, said last night that he was “not commenting ” on the matter, while a club spokesperson said that there would be “no comment on it at all”.
The cover-up could be described as a public relations triumph in terms of damage limation, but the vague details that have emerged about Keane’s comments hardly paint the picture of a club united in anything but name. Keane is said to have “named names”, accusing several players of lacking the necessary commitment to play for United, and one of those names is believed to be Ferdinand, the club’s £30 million record signing, who was so abject on Saturday that he was substituted so that team-mates “did not have to cover his position”, according to Carlos Queiroz, the assistant manager.
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