Stephen Elliott has revealed how Roy Keane wouldn't allow his Sunderland players to have a party after gaining promotion to the Premier League.
Elliott played for the Black Cats when they won the Championship under Keane's management in 2007.
The Manchester United legend criticised Aston Villa's players for celebrating avoiding relegation over the weekend and Elliott could relate to it.
He told RTÉ 2fm's Game On: "I had that with Roy when he managed us at Sunderland.
"We got promoted to the Premier League, and in the Championship we had won the league and he wouldn't let us have a celebratory party after the game.
"He wouldn't let us celebrate with the fans because his mindset was, 'Why are you celebrating? A team like Sunderland should be in the Premier League anyway'.
"But that was him coming from somewhere where he had won the Premier League seven or eight times.
"Some lads in that squad had never won a trophy before and they wanted to celebrate with the families and the fans.
"But in Roy's mind, it was 'we shouldn't be celebrating, we should be there anyway' and I think that's just Roy's mindset and that's maybe why he was such a top, top player and a big leader."
Elliott told how one player was "absolutely devastated" to hear there was to be no celebration party.
He added: "When I was there, I wasn't overly bothered because we had just [achieved promotion] a couple of seasons beforehand, so it's a little bit fresh in your mind.
"But there were some lads there, I remember the goalkeeper we had, Darren Ward, who was mid-30s at this stage.
"And he'd played a full season really well for us in goal. I remember him saying to me after it was decided that we weren't going to have any kind of celebration party, he was absolutely devastated because he had a couple of young boys and they had never celebrated anything with him on the pitch.
"He was looking forward to doing the whole open-top bus and celebrating with the fans and obviously Roy had taken that away from him.
"You can understand Roy's view. Sunderland's a big club and that they should have been in the Premier League. But you've got to look at each individual situation and try and make the best of everybody."
