Is Roy Keane a volcano waiting to erupt if, as expected, he is named as Sunderland's new manager today? Does anyone really expect it to work out?

He is up there with the biggest names in football and as a player he was second to none. Being a great player though offers no guarantees of being a great manager. In 1985 Lawrie McMenemy became Sunderland manager and that was sensational at the time.

Everyone thought the club was ready to take off but the opposite happened. He proved a disaster. Graeme Souness was a great player in a similar mould to Keane but what has he done as a manager? His man management skills seem none existent!

But I don’t think that will happen with Roy. He’s played for Brian Clough and Sir Alex Ferguson, two of the best-ever managers and I’m sure a lot has rubbed off. He managed to persuade Alex Ferguson that he could gauge a dressing room better than any other pro the old warhorse had encountered, a one-two which ravaged Premiership opposition and delivered the European Cup in the process. Yes, it ended in tears with an apparently lingering bitterness, but then that is often true of the most passionate of partnerships. The one between Ferguson and Keane was moulded by mutual self-interest and a shared belief in the proper ingredients of a successful football club.

I think the dissolving of the partnership in part, was to do with Keane’s accelerating decline as a truly great player that assaulted his spirit. But Keane is to be a manager now. He has been through the greatest turmoil of his life, the one that came with the dying of his physical power and now he has to make some sense of the rest of it.

But how will he fare as a manager? My suspicion is that ultimately he will be brilliant. Yes, there will be some eruptions, some moments of drama, but Keane understands football with the keenest of eyes for those who are prepared to go to their limits, as he did so consistently, and those whose hearts are perhaps less than resolute. I’m also sure he is well aware that it would be impossible task to ask his players straight away to meet the standards he imposed on himself. It would almost certainly lead to a collective nervous breakdown in the Sunderland dressing room.

Being such a driven personality, I believe he’ll be an outstanding manager. He’ll probably see Sunderland as a stepping-stone and believe his destiny is to manage Manchester United. Yes, he’ll kick a few backsides but will also attract top players to Sunderland. He’s such a huge personality; they’ll want to play for him. It won’t happen overnight. First he’s got to halt the slide but once that’s done and the ship’s stabilised, I can see things taking off.

I wait in anticipation for 25^th November when Sunderland meet Wolves, managed by Mick McCarthy. Handshakes all round that day then?