Ruthless boss bans lap of honour
10:00am Monday 5th May 2008
ROY Keane has banned his Sunderland players from staging a lap of honour in the wake of Sunday's final game of the season at home to Arsenal.
The Black Cats bring the curtain down on a successful return to the Premier League in six days time, but Keane does not see the club's top-flight survival as a cause for celebration.
This time last year, the Irishman pulled the plug on an opentopped bus tour of the city after the Black Cats claimed the Championship title, claiming the victory was no more than a club of Sunderland's size should expect. Twelve months on, and he is adopting a similar stance to Premier League survival, arguing that a record of at least 22 Premier League defeats is sufficient to render a lap of honour inappropriate.
"I take nothing away from what the players have done this season," said Keane. "But I also feel that it's not a time to be celebrating too much. What is there to celebrate? Survival is not a word we want to be using next year.
"I remember a few years ago when Everton stayed up on the last day of the season, everybody was out on the pitch celebrating.
People were crying and you were thinking, That's Everton Football Club'.
"I don't want my players to be walking around the pitch next week accepting the supporters' applause just because they've survived. I want us to be bigger than that.
"Maybe when I'm sitting on a beach later this summer, I'll look back and think, Yeah, that was a decent season and the players have done remarkably well'. But we've lost 22 games already, and I guarantee you that when I am on my holidays, I'll be thinking of those 22 defeats."
Next weekend's denouement draws obvious parallels with the 3-0 defeat to Arsenal in the penultimate home game of Sunderland's last season in the Premier League, a game that persuaded the Drumaville consortium to invest in the club.
The comprehensive manner of that defeat seemed to sum up the extent of Sunderland's failings as they became the worst club in Premier League history - a mantle that has now passed to Derby this weekend. But while the current campaign has not been without its struggles, Sunday's match should at least confirm how far the Black Cats have come in two seasons.
"I played in that Arsenal game a couple of seasons ago and it just seemed to sum the season up for us," said skipper Dean Whitehead.
"We were well beaten and it pretty much summed up what had been happening for the majority of the campaign.
"We know it'll be a difficult game - Arsenal will probably have the ball for long spells - but at least the mood will be a lot different this time around."