ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE:SUNDERLAND MANAGER Roy Keane insists certain footballers will run into off-the-field problems whether they earn lavish wages or not. Keane will send his side into tomorrow's Tyne-Wear derby clash with Newcastle with Magpies midfielder Joey Barton in line for a comeback.
Keane freely admits to the mistakes he made during his own illustrious playing career, and having had to help Sunderland striker Michael Chopra through his personal problems earlier this season, believes clubs have a major role to play. However, Keane is adamant that footballers have always been susceptible to distractions away from the game: "There has always been an element of it. You go back over a few years - Tony Adams and Paul Merson (come to mind) - and I am sure you can go back years before that, before my time, where different footballers had a lot of issues off the pitch.
"Maybe they had more sympathy years ago. They seem to get less sympathy now because of what people seem to be earning.
"(But) that has nothing to do with it if you have got some sort of problem away from football. You could be on £100 a week or £100,000, you are are going to have these addictions, whatever they might be. We see it in other sports, we see it in America, we see it in drugs, whatever it might be.
"And we see it with young kids in football now. I saw a couple of months ago, two young players were drug-tested and were found to have drugs in their system, so it goes on.
"These footballers will go out, they will go to clubs, they will socialise, they will mix with the wrong people and they will just go down the wrong road, and you just have to support them. I know there are one or two clinics around that are trying to help people and that's great because people need that support."
Barton's case is one of the more extreme - he served 74 days of a six-month prison sentence for assault and affray and is available to play again after completing a six-match ban, his punishment for a training ground incident involving former Manchester City team-mate Ousmane Dabo.
However, Keane admits it is easy for people to forget players are only human. "Sometimes you have to remind people outside of football that footballers are human beings, it's as simple as that. Players will make mistakes - I have had a few at my club make mistakes - but you have got to support them.
"Whatever is going on with other players at football clubs, you have just got to try to support them. But then I suppose there does come a point where hopefully the penny will drop with some of them that you have got to make the most of your career because, trust me, before you know it, it's over."
