PREMIER LEAGUE:They say that breaking up is hard to do, but they may need to rewrite the lyrics thanks to Roy Keane

BREAKING UP might never be easy but, as Roy Keane proved last week, it's certainly less difficult than it used to be. After all, with the advent of predictive texting you can now kiss goodbye to a promising Premier League managerial career in the time it takes the average baby to empty its pram of a Christmas' worth of Barney the Dinosaurs and Peppa Pigs.

At least, that's what we thought for about 24 hours: then, Niall Quinn informed the heaving masses that Roy had, in fact, not dumped him by text. Instead, Quinn had been let down gently - the sporting equivalent of Keane taking him out for a quiet drink, explaining that he just wasn't in a commitment place right now and offering a consoling hug as the Sunderland chairman blubbered quietly into his white wine spritzer.

On the one hand, this is rather sad. For a few woozy moments, we were able to ponder excitedly the exact nature of Keane's digital missive: had it been delivered in surly, teenage text-speak - two years of steady building and questionable beard growth thrown away with a simple 'LVING, L8RS, KNO'? - or had he at least taken the time to list the reasons in multiple messages, even if it took him over his monthly Flexiplan allocation?

The truth - that the pair engaged in a series of actual conversations - is rather more mundane, although the fact that Keane and Quinn have parted on relatively amicable terms at least allows the tantalising prospect of a reconciliation once the dust has settled.

You can picture it now - Keane bumps into old Disco Pants at the party of a mutual friend, one thing leads to another and before you know it the Corkman is waking up in the Stadium of Light boardroom, all beardy and blurry-eyed, haunted by hazy memories of penning a four-year contract and promising to re-sign El Hadji Diouf.

Either way, Keane has at least bequeathed something most unexpected to the world of Premier League management - a whole new form of resignation. We can now add the Unexpected Dumping to a list which, by my reckoning, currently stands at four.

1 The Quit Storm:So called because it invariably provokes tabloid headlines of '(Insert name here) in quit storm', this involves a manager - usually of the highly-strung, emotionally- fraught variety - prompting a veritable tempest of hysteria by flouncing out at a moment's notice.

Anything can provoke a Quit Storm - a dispute with some boardroom suit with a job title containing more brackets than a hardware store, a dirty look from the tea lady, whatever. The one thing that can be guaranteed is the reaction, which customarily involves hoards of tearful fans amassing at the stadium, burning their season tickets and threatening to set up a protest club unless their Messiah is reinstated. Also known as "A Keegan".

2 The Dignified Resignation:This is the Quit Storm, only without the drama - football's answer to a terminal cancer patient quietly slipping into the glorious everlasting, surrounded by just a few close friends and a Sky Sports News outside broadcast unit.

Only certain characters can pull off the Dignified Resignation without appearing self-indulgent: usually quiet, thoughtful, unspeakably dull men such as Alan Curbishley and Gerry Francis.

3 The Bolt:A personal favourite. This is when a manager, just hours after accepting a post, realises he has made a horrible, horrible mistake and flees the scene before the club shop has even had time to produce his personally-embossed training fleece. It is rarely seen, but appears to be mildly addictive - Dave "Harry" Bassett, for one, was something of a serial bolter - and invariably involves southern clubs such as Crystal Palace, QPR and Southampton, where the faint whiff of glamour cannot mask the rank stench of underachievement.

4 The Long Walk Into The Sunset:Not an easy one to pull off. Many long-serving managers have tried and failed with the LWITS in the past, only to realise as D-Day approaches that no other job allows you to earn a seven-figure salary, enjoy the kind of profile which is usually the preserve of presidents or Popes and bawl obscenities at journalists on a weekly basis.

Usually, a grizzled, bespectacled veteran will get to take a few tottering steps towards retirement before turning around and pegging it back to the dug-out as fast as his artificial hip can carry him. They then end their careers looking a sad imitation of their former virile selves, with noses redder than Rudolph and tracksuit bottoms hoisted just south of their nipples.

Keane, always a maverick, fitted into none of these categories when he stalked out of Sunderland, but in pioneering the Unexpected Dumping he has secured something which proves beyond many of his peers in a lifetime: a legacy. And that might just be his finest achievement of all.