SOCCER:Sunderland manager Roy Keane will ignore his manager of the month award for February as he sets his sights on promotion to the Premiership.
The former Republic of Ireland and Manchester United midfielder beat off competition from Wolves manager Mick McCarthy to take the monthly prize after seeing his side record four victories and a draw to climb into fourth place in the Championship table.
However, the 35-year-old barely allowed himself a smile as he prepared for tomorrow's vital trip to fellow promotion-chasers West Brom. He said: "I cannot get my head around why people give out awards during the season.
"The time to reflect on any season is at the end of it, and if the team deserves something, then you give the team the awards, not individuals and certainly not the manager.
"It's a nice reflection on the team, but the award will probably go in the garage. The players deserve all the credit. They are the ones who have got to cross that white line and do the business, and that is what they have been doing.
"I am not a great one for these individual awards because ultimately, it is a team game. If it were about individuals, these lads would not be playing football, they would be playing tennis or snooker.
"But they are playing for a team. Some days you have your off days, and that is when your team-mates help you out."
Keane, working alongside chairman Niall Quinn, has fostered a remarkable turnaround at the Stadium of Light, where fans were queuing yesterday morning to snap up the last of the club's 7,746 ticket allocation for the trip to Barnsley next weekend.
In his six months at the helm since taking over from Quinn, Sunderland have been transformed from a side languishing in the lower reaches of the table to one now firmly in the race for automatic promotion.
However, Keane insists that, just like monthly awards, no accolades should be handed out until the end of the season. He said: "The time to reflect will be at the end of the season.
"It is just like these bloody awards they give out month-to-month. It's about how you finish at the end of the season. I had great belief when I took the job we could turn things around and we could have a good season.
"But having said that, we have achieved nothing yet and I still believe the crunch time is over the next 11 games - but I have great belief in the players."
Asked if his side effectively has 11 cup finals to play, Keane replied: "No, it's more important than that."
Much of Sunderland's recent improvement has coincided with the arrival of transfer window signings Jonny Evans, Danny Simpson, Carlos Edwards, Stern John and Anthony Stokes, and the club has taken a significant step towards continuing its successful recruitment policy by adding former United chief scout Mick Brown to the staff.
Brown, who identified the likes of Ruud van Nistelrooy, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gabriel Heinze as targets for Alex Ferguson during an eight-year spell at Old Trafford, will take up a similar role at Sunderland.
