Former Manchester United centre-back Mikael Silvestre has described Roy Keane's sudden departure from Old Trafford back in 2005 as a "disaster," insisting the situation could have been handled better than it was.
Keane, following 12 years at United, left the club in November 2005 by mutual consent, with a recent breakdown in relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson one of the main contributing factors.
As well as that, an infamous critical analysis of United following a 4-1 reverse to Middlesbrough on the club's in-house TV channel - MUTV - was also a key contributor to his exit, with Keane still on the club's books at the time.
Having been a key figure in what United achieved in the first few years of the Ferguson era, Keane's exit came as a great surprise to everyone, including the players.
For Silvestre, who applied his trade at Old Trafford between 1999 and 2008, Keane's departure was a "disaster," but accepted that Keane was not the type of character, as he still is, that would hold back.
Silvestre told SPORTbible, via Freebets.com : "As players, we knew that Roy was always straight with us and he would treat everybody the same. He said, 'what I told the MUTV guys, I would've said to your face,' so it [the MUTV interview] wasn't an issue for us.
"People would be shocked if they saw the things that were said in the dressing room on the TV. But the vocabulary and the way Roy would speak in the dressing room was normal; losing 4-1 as Manchester United and the way we gave up the goals and conceded is what annoyed him the most.
"You could almost blame MUTV for putting him in that position, because if you know Roy, he's not going to hold back. It was a disaster in the end, but it could've been dealt in a much better way.
"It wasn't nice to see the relationship between Roy, the manager and Carlos Quieroz being ripped apart. When you win trophies, you need everyone to be together and there can't be any hard feelings or second thoughts about who you're going to work with or fight for.
"I felt bad to the point that when Roy left the meeting, I was the first one to leave after him about a second later because I wanted to drag him back to the meeting.
"I didn't feel it was the right way to end things, so I followed him to the dressing room, but couldn't get a word out to make him change his mind to go back upstairs to the meeting. I just saw him get changed and then he left."
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