On Soccer: On the only previous occasion Irish owners employed an Irish manager to run an English league club, television rather than football emerged as the biggest winner. If the marriage of John Courtenay and Roddy Collins at Carlisle United failed to produce the goods on the field of play, then off it Setanta did at least make out like bandits with The Rod Squad, their fly on the wall account of life at the club.

Four years on, how TV producers must salivate at the thought of access to the drama getting under away 70 miles up the road at Sunderland.

Not for the first time where Roy Keane is concerned, just about everybody has an opinion on whether he will succeed in his new career, but the truth is it is almost impossible to tell. The history of the game is littered with tales of great players who became awful managers and vice versa. The Corkman undoubtedly possesses many qualities that will serve him well but there are adjustments to be made if he is to cope with his new role, and the 35-year-old is likely to find he can not make the entirety of the transition on his own terms.

The inexperience of those around him - the Drumaville consortium has never owned a major football club and Niall Quinn has never run one - should ensure he is given a great deal of freedom to do the job as he sees fit. But it is not an entirely good thing that the key players in this enterprise are hoping to find their feet in a cut-throat world.

What Keane comes into is nevertheless a set-up geared for success and appearing only to require the sort of cash injection the Irish businessmen have committed to provide, combined with a knack for spending it well. The club's former chairman, Bob Murray, may have refused to spend heavily on players last year but he did utterly transform the club's infrastructure and facilities. The Stadium of Light may not be the most expensively finished arena in British football but, with a capacity of 50,000, it is one of the biggest while the training ground and academy are widely held up as models of how clubs should build for the future.

The Corkman enjoys other advantages too. He inherits a Sunderland side that has won so rarely during the past year its supporters have come, with almost comic fatalism, to expect the worst.

Mick McCarthy won promotion two seasons ago on a comparative shoestring but never got anything like the funds required to keep the team up. Elsewhere, though, there are plenty of examples of clubs having spent their way out of the division in which the team is struggling and Keane will be handed a war-chest most rivals only dream about.

Obviously, there are problems too. A glance at the table gives a good idea of the first one. Prior to yesterday's game with West Brom, Sunderland had lost all five of their competitive outings this season.

The first team has won just five competitive games in more than a year and two of those came against modest opponents from lower leagues. Nobody, then, underestimates the scale of the rebuilding to be undertaken by Keane.

Then there is his relationship with Quinn which, while said to be mended, could quickly come under considerable strain again if either man is perceived by the other not to be delivering.

At least Keane should be well connected and well regarded enough to be offered young players at Premiership clubs looking for the experience of first-team football, as well as astute enough to pick up a few hardened campaigners with the ability to make a major impact at a lower level. Those in the latter category often disappoint because, having realised they are unlikely ever to flourish on the game's major stages again, they are disillusioned and disinterested. But it is genuinely difficult to see any player regarding a team managed by Keane as an easy stepping stone to retirement.

Keane's anticipated motivational skills are a major selling point and his ability to deliver in this department will be a key test. One doesn't need to agree with the way the former international handled things in Saipan or during the latter days of his career at Manchester United to admire what he strove to achieve in the game, and the hope will be he will communicate that ambition to players.

Quinn's observation that Keane undermined rather than bolstered team spirit by "humiliating" younger team-mates at Old Trafford might seem self-evident to all but his most ardent admirers, but even his fiercest critics would acknowledge his intelligence and ready inclination to lead. Whatever the reasoning behind his decision to slate younger United squad members last year, it seems unlikely he will engage in public denunciations now he is a manager. It will be enthralling, though, to hear how he handles players behind closed doors, not least when they hurtle off the rails in the way he did during his early years in England.

If he stays in management for the next 30 years, though, he will be lucky to encounter a player who meets the sort of expectations he set for himself during his best years at United. But if he comes to terms with that fact during the early stages of his new career, one suspects Keane may be on the way to making a great name for himself all over again.

Ultimately, promotion should be achievable within the lifetime of the contract he signed yesterday. After that the most interesting question may be whether Keane looks for an opportunity to move on to bigger things. Whatever happens, it will be worth watching, even if, on this occasion, it will only be from a distance.