Couñago: "Coward" Keane is better as an assistant

So as you've likely heard, Roy Keane's new autobiography The Second Half gets released today. Wheee and/or who cares? Since Keane has only been Aston Villa's assistant manager for a few months now, we can't expect too much in there about our beloved club, but that doesn't mean there's nothing to talk about here.

If you've been living in a cave, you may not have heard that Keane has apparently taken a scorched-earth approach in the book, criticizing anyone and everyone. Amongst the most lambasted were players from Keane's second managerial stint at Ipswich Town. He's accused many of his former players of being lazy and admitted to a nice round of fisticuffs with one.

And, of course, this isn't sitting too well with those former players. Pablo Couñago, a striker in Keane's tenure with the club who is now with FC Honka in Finland, has publicly spoken out, and the quotes are pretty good. Couñago accuses Keane of simply being jealous:

"I don't know if it was because he didn't want me to have that good relationship with the fans, because he said to me he never understood the relationship I had with the fans, why they sang my name, why they loved me. I think it annoyed him. It was a big surprise for me, how it looked like he was jealous of that. For me it was like ‘what's going on here?', someone like Roy Keane, one of the biggest names in Manchester United history, and now he is getting annoyed because the people like me."

Earlier, Couñago accuses Keane of being a coward for not getting into a fight with him. But my favorite part, by far, is the fact that Couñago assuages the fears of Villa fans who might be thinking that perhaps Keane wasn't a good hire for the club:

"After the Ipswich job he didn't get another job for a while because the other clubs start to know what you are like. He's better as an assistant because he doesn't have to do anything and he can be kept to one side."

Oh, well if he's a better assistant then I'm sure we're totally fine!