George Graham and Gordon Strachan were pictures of diffidence on Saturday night when both might justifiably have been bathing, and in Graham's case, drowning, in self-glorification.
Graham, having guided his Tottenham side to the top of the league table for the first time in 13 years, to the bewilderment of both sections of north London, eschewed the opportunity to pass down tablets of stone from the mountain top in favour of some pebbles of home truths. And Strachan, fed a dolly drop question which invited a thump over the heads of critics who questioned his sanity in paying Stg£6 million for his two goal debutant Robbie Keane, played a straighter bat than we had seen at the Oval in four days.
The Coventry manager, whose demeanour could not have been more unfriendly had he been offered a copy of Alex Ferguson's autobiography, initially answered the suggestion of Match Of The Day's Garth Crooks that he could not have expected such a start from Keane with one word. "Yes," he replied, before adding that Keane did not have to justify himself to anyone at Coventry, presumably including the club's accountants.
Graham and Strachan were perhaps both pre-acknowledging that the weekend's most significant action would not start until Arsenal's match against Manchester United kicked off yesterday. If so, events at Highbury, a challenge to the blood pressure levels even of those fans deprived of Sky TV's new digital interactive services, proved them absolutely correct.
Robbie Keane's goals brought Coventry's first win of the season, but some would question whether the ability of a £6 million striker to knock in a couple against Derby is worthy of celebration. However, it is worth bearing in mind that strikers in that price range tend to arrive from far flung corners of the world, accompanied by agents, interpreters and several members of their family and with return tickets in their top pockets.
Since the influx of foreigners, it is almost unheard of for a club like Coventry to pay a club record fee to bring someone like Keane the few miles from the Black Country to the Premiership's promised land. Keane is the most expensive teenager in British football history, and after the failure of recent predecessors with that tag, it was pleasing to see him make an immediate impression. Keane's goals helped to produce a second successive weekend when the majority of Premiership goals came not from the fancy foreign dans but home grown Dans like Mills of Leeds. Of the Premiership's 28 goals, 20 came from British and Irish players, including Ugo Ehiogu's own goal at Chelsea. It was a reminder that there is still some stellar home grown talent in the Premiership, of which Keane was a shining example. Inflation in football being geared more to Hampstead house prices than to the economy at large, Keane's price actually rose from £5.5 million to £6 million in the month or so that Aston Villa dithered over buying him. Villa baulked at the extra half a million, while Fergie at Manchester United baulked at what he considered the extra five and a half million.
Ferguson said: "If we could have got him for £500,000 and played him in our reserves for a couple of seasons, we might have been interested." Ferguson will get a better chance to assess Keane when his side visits Highfield Road on Wednesday. But after yesterday, he will be grateful that he has kept enough money available to secure the ongoing services of the other R Keane, if he has not also left that too late.
