WHY THE KEANE SAGA IS UNFATHOMABLE

TRYING to understand Rafa's mind sometimes is like trying to wade through the thickest of mud.
Many commentators have offered opinions on the well-trodden Keane saga, but not one has managed to produce a reasonable account that would explain the manager's rationale.
If there's one person who has emerged out of this sorry affair with head held high, it is Robbie Keane.
Straight-batting and tight-lipped throughout, he never resorted to speaking about being shabbily treated, his behaviour was an absolute credit to him.
I read Rafa's comments in the Echo last night about why he HAD to sell Keane, but I was still none the wiser.
It all adds up to the conclusion that we are not being told something.

For a team having their first realistic shot at a Premiership title in years, it seems strange to sell on one of your top strikers.
Particularly as our major undoing in recent weeks has not been our defending, but our inability to score more than one goal a game, or rather, someone score a goal other than Gerrard or Torres.
Why sell Keane now? Why not wait until the summer? He'll still be coveted then and Spurs will doubtless be waving silly sums of money around again.
It's seems hard to escape the fact that Liverpool are now seriously bereft of genuine attacking options.
Ryan Babel has spent the last couple of months angering Reds fans with his apathy on the pitch, lack of any tangible end product and general air of indifference.
He is barely worth a place on the bench, let alone a starting place.
Ngog may have pace, but is miles way from first team standard.
Which leaves Kuyt, an admirable professional who has fashioned a right midfield slot for himself by virtue of the fact that he has nose bleeds in front of goal.
Added to that, Torres is showing himself to be more and more susceptible to hamstring problems that dogs strikers with great pace.
What happens if El Nino gets crocked again? Do we summon back The Tank from Hertha Berlin?

People say Keane's market value would have dropped significantly in the summer to something round the £10m mark, as at 29-ish he only has a few years left, so the chance to recoup most of our iniial outlay had to be taken when the money was on the table down in London.
Perhaps.
But why not bring a striker of note into the squad into the transfer window to compensate for our lack of strikign options?
Even a Heskey for £3.5m would have given us another option up front as he is already proving for Villa.

It's just all very strange. Benitez is persisting with the big money signings of Babels and Lucas' of this world despite below par showings, yet he can't do the same for Keane.
And Keane has actually had some decent moments for the club amongst some proper howlers.
For the misses against Preston, Bolton, Villa and the anonymous performance against Everton at Anfield, there were clincal double strikes against West Brom and Bolton, a man of the match showing against PSV away, some decent assists as in the derby at Goodison, and during the games he didn't deliver, he still put in impressive 100% workrate.
Kuyt gets the plaudits for just doing the latter and nothing else every game.

Some people claim Keane has been shocking, I don't agree. He's been definitely disappointing at times, and below what a £20m should deliver, but a player, particularly a striker, needs time to settle.
Look at Henry at Arsenal. How long was Crouch given to settle at Anfield when he couldn't hit a barn door?
The general consensus is that Rafa didn't want Keane, but Parry did, and the chief executive got his way.
Maybe this is true. But surely Rafa must have had some sort of keeness (pardon the pun) for the Irishman?
Otherwise, we are faced trying to comprehend a balance of power at Anfield that sees players brought to Liverpool, COMPLETELY against the manager's wishes.
Surely if a £20m striker was brought to Liverpool completely contrary to Benitez's wishes, he would have walked.
He didn't, which suggests that there was a fair degree of willingness from him to bring Keane to Anfield.
That said, it makes his treatment of Keane all the more baffling.
And come on, the endless substitutions, dropping him after a couple of ineffective games, was hardly sending waves of confidence to his new star signing.
They might as well had the dressing room bath full to the brim with hot water on 66 minutes every game so predictable were Kean'e withdrawals.
And decisions not to introduce him, for example, during the home 2-2 against Hull, and instead bring on the striking talent (!!) of Lucas simply could not be explained by anybody.

Equally, employing Keane as a deep-lying striker in a kind of Cantona role was always going to be foreign to Keane.
He was never played as he wanted, the way he has been reaping rewards form the bulk of his career.
As a centre forward.

I was one of those delighted with the Keane signing. It seemed he was the star talent that would compliment Torres and give us licence to attack sides, to finally shed that slightly cautious approach we've always had under Benitez.
Early on, there were worrying signs that Keane looked slow. I remember being alarmed at his miss away at Villa.
Not with the fact that he missed the target. But that he had several yards on Reo-Coker, but the defender ate up the ground to catch Keane and throw in a challenge that ultimately put the striker off, despite his howls for a penalty.

There were other moments when he looked short of pace, unable to pull away from defenders.
This slowness meant he would drop deep often looking for the ball. It was hard to understand that a top drawer striker could look so leaden-footed against average defenders.
It wasn't the stuff we expected after seeing Keane make mincemeat of our back four last season in the 2-2 at Anfield, him bagging both.
Perhaps that was the thing. Both the majority of his goals involved gliding instantly across the 18 yard box, aided by flick ons from Berbatov, or balls pulled back from the byline (another failing of this Reds side) by Lennon or Bale.
Perhaps, that was the match up he needed, a tall, good in the air partner who supplied him with fodder, and proper width.
And paired with Torres he would never get that. He was always going to be the one doing the donkey work, dropping deep to find work.
His detractors nonetheless would argue that a top striker should be able to switch into any system, and any way of playing if he is skilled enough to do so.
Perhaps.
Why am I making these points if I feel Keane should have stayed and was not given a fair crack of the whip?
It's because surely our management team would have done their homework before we signed him, looking at Keane's strengths, how to get the best out of him, and analysis made of the type of strikers he plays best with.
If we did, would it not have been apparent that he was a forward that would have struggled to fit in with our style of playing.
That out and out PACE, and PACE ALONE, was essential to play in this Liverpool side?
And if that homework WAS done, then it's the Anfield hierarchy who have got to take a fair share of the blame for a signing that did Liverpool no favours and left Reds fans baffled.
What a way to lose £3m in six months.
By that token though, why wasn't the pacy Craig Bellamy a success at Liverpool? And equally the pacy Cisse?
It seems to boil down to the frustrating point that strikers find it excruciatingly difficult to fit into Liverpool's way of playing.
Bellamy, Cisse, Morientes, Diouf, Heskey, Crouch, Kuyt......
Only truly exceptional talents like Torres, Owen and Fowler have reaped any rewards in recent times.

For the sake of Keane, I'm pleased he's got some parity in his professional life and will be allowed to carry on scoring goals, which I'm sure he'll do in abundance again with Spurs.
It will will be mightily interesting come the last game of the season, home to Tottenham, if the league title remains in the balance.
I wonder of a wound-up Keane will be terrorising us as he did last season, determined to prove a certain cast-iron Spaniard wrong.
I hope not.