Roy Keane will be fined two weeks' wages, £150,000, after a rare retraction from Alex Ferguson last night. The Manchester United manager accepted that his captain was guilty of elbowing Jason McAteer at the Stadium of Light on Saturday, violent conduct that earned Keane the 11th red card of his career.

Ferguson publicly supported Keane immediately after the match, stating that it was an "innocuous" collision. Ferguson said that United would lodge an official appeal with the English FA and he accused McAteer of "going down as though he had been shot in the back of the head."

Yesterday, however, Ferguson was forced to withdraw those comments and said that Keane will face internal disciplinary action as well as the automatic three-match ban from the FA. The ban would be enforced 14 days from the original incident which means the first game Keane will miss is the game with Leeds United at Elland Road on Saturday week.

"The replay I was shown directly after the game was misleading," explained Ferguson. "When I saw the pictures on Saturday night from a different angle I saw the referee had no choice but to send him off.

"It was clear that Roy caught him \ on the side of his head and, as such, we won't be appealing. I still say it was petty rather than grievous and that Roy did not swing his elbow. But I can see he definitely connected with it. Therefore, Uriah Rennie had no option but to show a red card."

Ferguson's embarrassment is intensified because it is only six months since the United manager, in a thinly-veiled attack on Arsenal and Patrick Vieira in particular, described illegal use of the elbow as "the worst crime in the game." He said then: "It's a coward's way of playing. That sort of thing does not happen here."

But it has now and yesterday Ferguson added: "I've said recently that use of the elbow is a growing problem in our game. Roy is the first United player to be sent off for an elbowing offence. We have never before had a player at Manchester United who has been sent off for doing that."

Keane's punishment for events in Sunderland will not be announced until the FA read Rennie's match report. But with the FA expected to announce this week what action they will take over the remarks about Alf Inge Haaland in Keane's recently published autobiography, the player could be looking at a further three matches for bringing the game into disrepute. That could see Keane being out of Premiership football until October 26th when Aston Villa, and Steve Staunton, visit Old Trafford.

The Sunderland players were under strict orders not to speak about Keane, but it is known that several had been reading Keane's book in the dressing-room prior to the game.

There is a brief history of turbulence between McAteer and Keane, but it was fractious rather than bitter. It was most definitely not physical.