THEY could end the weekend as Championship champions but Roy Keane has claimed that Sunderland would have been "slugging it out with Leeds" had Niall Quinn not completed his Stadium of Light takeover last summer.

While Leeds will be preparing for life in League One after entering administration yesterday, Sunderland will claim the Championship title if they win at Luton and current leaders Birmingham fail to beat Preston.

The Championship crown would provide a fitting finale to a season that has seen the Black Cats embark on a 17-game unbeaten run and banish the memory of last year's calamitous tumble from the top-flight.

Sunderland will return to the Premiership as a club on the up, but the story might have been very different had Quinn not devoted his time, energy and money to buying out former chairman Bob Murray last August.

The former Republic of Ireland international successfully persuaded eight disparate business figures to form the Drumaville consortium, then held the group together as they overcame a number of obstacles before completing their buy-out of the Black Cats.

Quinn's perseverance and vision eventually persuaded Keane to end his footballing exile and the Black Cats boss claims that without his chairman's efforts, Sunderland would have been suffering a similar meltdown to the one that could yet plunge Leeds into administration.

"God knows what would have happened if Niall hadn't come into things," said Keane, who is confident that his players have not allowed confirmation of their promotion to affect preparations for the trip to Kenilworth Road.

"Maybe Sunderland would have been slugging it out with Leeds instead of preparing for the Premiership.

"I think Niall has had a vital role to play. The club was on its knees, there's no getting away from that.

"For one reason or another, the heart of the club had been ripped out over the last few years. It wasn't just because of the way the team had been playing, off-the-field stuff hadn't help things either.

"The supporters were definitely disillusioned but they always had respect for Niall because of the way he was as a player and the way he conducted himself with his testimonial and all of that. When Niall came in, it got one or two people back on the good side of the club. That feelgood factor was always going to be vital to moving things forward this season."

While Quinn was greeted as a saviour when he finally assumed control of the club, the goodwill generated by his arrival was in danger of dissipating when Sunderland lost their first four matches of the season.

A Carling Cup defeat at Bury proved a seasonal nadir, with Quinn reluctantly accepting that his managerial skills were insufficient to deal with the extent of the crisis he inherited.

Crucially, his next move was to go back to Keane and, after a face-to-face discussion in Ireland, the former Manchester United skipper agreed to take over at the Stadium of Light.

The pair agreed a strict division of labour, with Keane concentrating on footballing affairs and Quinn devoting his attention to rebuilding a relationship between the club and its fans.

Their remits have rarely overlapped and, with Quinn proving adept at re-energising a fanbase that had grown accustomed to failure, Keane has been able to devote himself to footballing affairs.

"When I took the job it was important that I was only going to be involved with the football side of things," he explained.

"I wasn't going to be coming here on a PR trip and I wasn't going to be doing appearances left, right and centre.

"I wasn't going to be going to supporters' branches all the time because that's not my job. My job is to win football matches.

"That was all agreed and it was important that I was left alone to get on with things from then. I have been and I think that's suited Niall and the rest of the board as well.

"The new owners have kept reasonably quiet and Niall and the players have done a lot of PR work. There's been stuff going on and the feel-good factor is back in the city.

"Ultimately, though, winning football matches is always the thing that gets you lots of fans back.

"We've had over 40,000 people at the ground a few times now and that's a great boost for any player."

Capacity crowds are likely to be even more common next season and, with a number of transfer targets having already been identified, Keane expects his chairman to have a busy summer as everyone associated with Sunderland gears themselves for life in the Premiership.

"I'm sure it'll be a busy summer for Niall and Peter Walker (chief executive)," he said. "I can identify the targets, but it's up to them to get the ball rolling in terms of negotiating with the clubs.

"There are some good players here, let me tell you. But the next challenge for a lot of those players is to make it in the Premiership. The Premiership is a different animal.

"Championship teams have done okay against Premiership teams in the cup but they're one-off games. Imagine playing Chelsea on the Saturday then going to Old Trafford on the Wednesday, then Bolton on the Saturday and then Tottenham the Wednesday after.

"You have to do it every week then and that's the challenge for these players.

"It's a challenge for me and the coaching staff to make sure we've got the squad to cope."