Premier League / Jaymes Monte / 05 December 2008 / Leave a comment

The Black Cats were heading for the same fate as Leeds and Nottingham Forest before Roy Keane arrived at the club, says James Monte as he looks for value and optimism in the Next Sunderland Manager Market.

The Premier League managerial merry-go-round has claimed its latest victim in the shape of the bearded man from County Cork. Yes, a poor run of six defeats in seven games has led to Roy Keane walking away from his first ever managerial job and presented us with another Next Manager Market.

As a Sunderland fan if you had asked me my opinion on Saturday evening after watching us get embarrassed by Bolton, I would have ranted and raved endlessly and probably concluded that I thought it was time Keane left, that he had taken us as far as he could and that his stubbornness was becoming detrimental to the team's fortunes.

However, now that he has gone and the likely candidates for the job have become apparent it is looking like a depressing state of affairs. Not one of the touted names fills me with excitement or optimism.

When Keane (and more importantly Niall Quinn and Drumaville) took over the club we were bottom of the Championship heading for a similar fate as Leeds and Nottingham Forest, but he turned us around and won the league that same season. However, he couldn't live off that forever and with the ownership of the club shifting from Irish to American, his shortcomings wouldn't be as easily forgiven as they might have been by his compatriots who worshipped the ground he walked on.

Although Niall Quinn has stressed that they did everything to try and keep Keane and that it was entirely his decision to leave the club, I do not believe that the Americans involvement was not a factor when Keane came to his conclusion.

There is a sense of irony that Keane's final game in charge was against Bolton Wanderers and there is a distinct Bolton feel to the top of the market with three of the six shortest priced candidates having links to the club. Sam Allardyce heads the betting at [3.3] and his former head coach, Ricky Sbragia at [26.0] and former assistant Phil Brown at [27.0] are seen as contenders in what is still a wide open market.

However, it is not Niall Quinn's hidden desire to have Sunderland playing long-ball, Bolton style football that has them at the head of the betting, they do all have links to Sunderland Football Club.

Allardyce played 25 times and scored twice for Sunderland during the 1980-81 season and was also a long time leading candidate for the managers job before Keane took over. Phil Brown was born and raise in nearby South Shields as a Sunderland fan. Ricky Sbragia was appointed to the Sunderland coaching staff back in November 2007 by Roy Keane and was the obvious choice to take over as Caretaker manager. We've all seen from recent events up the road what can happen if an interim manager has a few good results.

Quinn stated in his press conference that neither he nor any of the board have even thought about a replacement for Roy Keane yet. This coupled with the fact that the most of the men heading the betting have negligible Sunderland or Irish links shows that the current market is based on guess work.

Allardyce is way too short at this stage to take on board as a betting prospect and it is well worth looking elsewhere for value. Sunderland's American links may mean Bruce Arena is worth a nibble at [230.00] and Sven Goran Eriksson's tentative position as Mexican head coach means [130.0] could be worth a few quid. Both could provide decent trading positions as speculation increases in the coming days and weeks.

Ultimately, it is difficult to see us getting any manager who can raise the profile of the club in the same way and attract the same calibre of players as Keane did.