Andy Reid has detailed how things 'got out of hand' at Sunderland during Roy Keane's reign.
The Dubliner played under Keane at the Black Cats before the Manchester United legend resigned as manager in late 2008.
Reid believes Keane regrets bringing in players such as Pascal Chimbonda, Anton Ferdinand and El Hadji Diouf, while recalling a training ground row between the latter two.
Reid told the Open Goal podcast with Si Ferry: "Roy said to us 'you're too nice, so I'm bringing in some people who aren't so nice'. That's what he wanted to do.
"I don't know if anyone has ever asked him about it, but I'd imagine he regrets bringing them in because there was a real imbalance in the squad.
"It started to get out of hand with arguments and fights in training all the time, Roy ended up leaving. El Hadji Diouf was fighting with everybody, he pulled out a knife on Anton Ferdinand.
"That happened, that's not me telling you anything that's not already out there. That was public knowledge.
"We stayed up that season after Ricky Sbragia and Dwight Yorke took over. We stayed up by default really, we maybe won one game in the last ten or something like that. We stayed up because Newcastle were worse and then Duffer (Damien Duff) scored an OG on the last day of the season against Villa.
"We lost our last game at home to Chelsea, 2-1, and we just had to match or better Newcastle's result. We did and we stayed up, but by total default really. We were struggling, there was people pulling in all different directions."
