Former Sunderland midfielder Andy Reid says Roy Keane's demise as manager came after he deliberately signed players ‘who aren’t so nice’.
Irish international Reid's time at Sunderland included a period under Keane, who left the Black Cats after failing to prevent their slide down the Premier League table.
Speaking on the Open Goal podcast, Reid said that the beginning of the end for Keane was when he brought in new players to shake things up.
Reid said: “We signed Pascal Chimbonda and Dijibril Cissé and El Hadji Diouf. Listen, I remember when they came in, and Roy said to us, 'You're too nice, so I'm bringing in some people who aren't so nice.’ That was what he wanted to do.
“I don't know if anybody’s even asked him before, but I would imagine he probably regrets bringing them in because it turned out to be 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.”
Keane left during the 2008/09 season and was replaced by Richard Sbragia, who guided Sunderland to Premier League safety.
Reid continued: “We stayed up by default really. We maybe won one game in the last ten games or something like that. We stayed up because Newcastle were worse and poor old Duffer [Damien Duff] scored an OG in the final game of the season against Villa. That kept us up.
“We lost our last game at home to Chelsea. We just had to match or better Newcastle's result and we stayed up and they got relegated, but totally by default really because we were struggling.
“We were all over the place. There was people pulling in all different directions and we were lucky enough to stay up.
“Then Steve Bruce came in then at the start of the next season and really pulled it together and started pulling it in the right direction.”
You can listen to the full interview here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=3072OjkLbUk
