Roy Keane overstepped his mark, he had to leave - Sir Alex Ferguson

5 May 2001: Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson and Roy Keane with the FA Carling Premiership trophy after the FA Carling Premiership match between Manchester United and Derby County at Old Trafford, Manchester.

Former Manchester United manager Sir Alex Ferguson, revealing the reasons behind terminating Roy Keane‘s United contract in November 2005 by paying him in full, has said that Keane’s unacceptable criticism of the club’s players in an MUTV interview forced him to take immediate measures to clear the mess that the former United captain had created within the squad.

In his new book My Autobiography, Ferguson has written: “The hardest part of Roy’s body is his tongue. He has the most savage tongue you can imagine. He can debilitate the most confident person in the world in seconds with that tongue.

“What I noticed about him that day when I was arguing with him was that his eyes started to narrow, almost to wee black beads. It was frightening to watch. And I’m from Glasgow.”

At the press conference of his book launch, the former United boss was quoted as saying by the Mirror: “Roy overstepped his mark, absolutely overstepped his mark. That’s the sort of personality he has. For some reason he decided to criticise his team-mates. He did it in a MUTV show but we couldn’t release that video.”

“A few days later a few of the younger players were booed as a result of what he’d said. So we decided we had to do something.

“The meeting we had in that room was horrendous. But I just couldn’t lose the control of that situation. If I had let it pass, the players would have looked at me differently, much differently.

“I think it’s clear that I had to show I was strong enough to deal with issues like that.”

The Ireland international made scathing remarks about his teammates in the MUTV interview, the broadcast of which was eventually vetoed. It is believed that he had termed Kieran Richardson as a “lazy defender”, raised doubts over “why people in Scotland rave about Darren Fletcher” and had to say this on Rio Ferdinand “Just because you’re paid £120,000-a-week and play well for 20 minutes against Tottenham, you think you’re a superstar”.