The Second Half - Tapa blanda

Roy Keane's book is a masterpiece: The Second Half gives a startling account of his colourful career and reveals the hard-man midfielder's long-hidden good points ... Keane's book, ghost-written by Roddy Doyle, is an endlessly absorbing piece of work. It may well be the finest, most incisive deconstruction of football management that the game has ever produced (Patrick Collins THE MAIL ON SUNDAY)

There is much in Roy Keane's new book that is thoughtful and self-mocking, insightful and funny (George Caulkin THE TIMES)

Keane's book - ghosted by Roddy Doyle - is brutal, amusing and self-deprecating, often at the same time (Des Kelly EVENING STANDARD)

Roddy Doyle's works, mostly set in a fictional Dublin suburb, often star quietly frustrated everymen, and it's this book's achievement to make you see its mighty subject in that light (Anthony Cummins DAILY TELEGRAPH)

It is the dearth of integrity that makes Pietersen such a peevish, trifling character, and the surfeit that makes Keane so entrancingly epic ... the personification of honest to a fault ... he is as close as sport can offer to an Old Testament prophet. Heroically unconcerned with being loved, almost insanely devoted to telling what he regards as the plain truth, he may not always be engaging. But ... he stands out as utterly and irreducibly true to himself (Matthew Norman THE INDEPENDENT)

The best things are the small things: regretting joining Ipswich when he discovered the training kit was blue; refusing to sign Robbie Savage because his answerphone message was rubbish; being appalled that his side had listened to an Abba song before playing football. The irrational, blistering intolerance is delicious. Keane famously detested yes-men; he created himself as the ultimate no-man. And he's still here (Dan Jones EVENING STANDARD)

A genuine pleasure; it is a masterpiece of the genre and one that paints, in an entirely unintentional way, an extremely flattering portrait of the man ... Keane is not afraid to laugh at himself by telling stories against himself ... His thoughts on his players are humane, interesting, candid and never less than believable ... Keane's story is of a man, too, one who has had to look at football and life anew as a manager, and it is this added perspective that gives richness and humanity to the tale (Mike Atherton THE TIMES)

When Keane says anything, listening is usually the best option. He's scarily extreme, dangerously provocative, oxy-acetylene forthright ... and hugely entertaining ... Self-desctruction, self-pity, self-laceration - his latest unburdening has all this and more. His book reveals more flaws and admits to more mistakes than Sir Alex Ferguson did in his last literary effort - and Keane's is much funnier (Aidan Smith SCOTLAND ON SUNDAY)

The book is brilliantly constructed, rattling along at breakneck speed. And it makes a change from the standard sporting autobiography in being so hard on its principal subject. This is a book full of self-deprecation ... No self-aggrandisement, rather a ruthless self-examination (Jim White DAILY TELEGRAPH)

Keane's eminent co-writer, Booker Prize-winning Irish author Roddy Doyle, does a brilliant job. His gift for comedy and swearing, together with his wonderfully transparent style, not only captures his country man's voice but also adds some much-needed light and shade to the unforgiving business of being Roy Keane. It's not a sentence I expected to write but the account of Keane's triumphant first season at Sunderland is particularly uplifting (Neil O'Sullivan FINANCIAL TIMES)

ROY KEANE was born in Cork in 1971, and is now a television pundit for ITV after an astonishingly successful football career as captain of Manchester United and Ireland. He is currently the assistant manager of the Republic of Ireland football team. RODDY DOYLE was born in Dublin in 1958 and still lives there today. He is the author of ten acclaimed novels including THE COMMITMENTS, THE SNAPPER, THE VAN and most recently THE GUTS; two collections of short stories; RORY & ITA, a memoir about his parents; and TWO PINTS, a collection of dialogues. He won the Booker Prize in 1993 for PADDY CLARKE HA HA HA, and his 1991 novel THE VAN was a Booker Prize finalist.