Shortly after being relegated from England’s top flight with a record low points tally, Sunderland named Keane as their new manager following a difficult start to their Championship campaign in 2016.
He inherited a team devoid of confidence, but soon, Keane transformed the likes of Grant Leadbitter, Dwight Yorke and David Connolly into league winners as they finished top, two points ahead of Birmingham City.
A busy summer followed as Sunderland brought in a number of players, including Craig Gordon, Kieran Richardson and Kenwyne Jones, a £6 million signing from Southampton.
Keane managed to get the best out of Jones, who would end up being the club’s top scorer that season, but it was a “very frustrating” period when it came to transfers.
“Trying to get good players in became very frustrating,” he said in his book, The Second Half.
“The wise thing to do is to step back from it a bit, and this is where a good chief executive is. I had that at Sunderland, Peter Walker. He got deals done—and Niall. Everything was—and this is a big word for me – transparent.”
Keane has previously admitted it wasn’t always easy to attract players to the North East.
And ahead of the 2007/08 campaign, Sunderland missed out on signing Darren Bent from Charlton, who wanted £16 million for the striker.
The Irishman was told to “forget about him and move on” after being told it was an unrealistic move. Bent, meanwhile, wanted £60,000 per week.
“I still think that if we’d bought Darren Bent then, at the start of the ’07-’08 season, I’d still be the Sunderland manager,” he said in the book.
“He’d have got the goals. But it was too much money. They bought him later, after I’d left, because they’d had another Premiership so they had more money to spend.”
Keane added: “The longer the club stays in the Premiership, the bigger an attraction it is to players, and the club can start to afford the higher wages.”
Bent would join Spurs for a then-club-record fee of £16.5 million in June 2017.
Featured Image Credit: Getty Images – The Overlap
