Roy Keane was shocked to see his Sunderland team psych themselves up for games by listening to Abba’s Dancing Queen but Gus Poyet is rather more relaxed about pre-match music.
“I don’t have an Abba album but I did go to see Mamma Mia,” said Keane’s latest successor at the Stadium of Light. “The boys decide our dressing-room music between themselves and I haven’t heard anything I didn’t like. So long as I can still talk it’s OK. Music can create a bit of atmosphere and I don’t mind that.”
What Poyet does object to is fellow managers and former players dishing the dirt and he has no intention of buying Keane’s latest autobiography. “I’m not a fan of football people writing books,” said Sunderland’s manager as he prepared to take his side to Southampton on Saturday.
“I hate these books. You can’t say one day that what happens in the dressing room stays in the dressing room, then write a book. I don’t care who you are, I don’t like it. Although my book would make a good one.
“I enjoy telling stories about my time in football when I’m having dinner with friends but I don’t agree with going public like that. It involves so many other people and I don’t like it. I’ve not read Roy Keane’s book, although I’ve seen a few comments about it in the press because I like to keep myself informed.”
Poyet’s belief in discretion extends well beyond the Aston Villa assistant’s collaboration with Roddy Doyle. He was deeply unimpressed by his predecessor Paolo Di Canio’s criticisms of Sunderland’s captain John O’Shea and midfielder Lee Cattermole as well as their former full back Phil Bardsley, who joined Stoke in the summer.
“When I arrived here Phil Bardsley or Lee Cattermole would never have played for me if I had listened to the things I’d heard about them,” he said. “Instead I just told them to show me what they could do. More and more now it’s about what you say in the press or on Twitter or in a book. But it’s all nonsense – it’s nothing to do with football.”
