Not even Roy Keane can bring himself to get angry about Man Utd any longer

Roy Keane and Gary Neville were joined by Jamie Carragher and Daniel Sturridge as part of Sky's post-match punditry crew
Roy Keane and Gary Neville were joined by Jamie Carragher and Daniel Sturridge as part of Sky's post-match pundit crew - Sky Sports

Manchester United really are toast: even Roy Keane and Gary Neville couldn’t bring themselves to be all that brutal. It is one thing to be eviscerated by your firebrand former players, but to be pitied?

Rather than the outraged tone that had become as much of a Sunday staple in the post-Fergie era as roast potatoes and melancholia about Monday morning, Roy was largely measured as Manchester United folded meekly to Liverpool. Where once Keane used his Super Sunday pulpit to rain terror down upon the wretched sinners attempting to fill his boots in the Old Trafford midfield, Sunday found him resigned, like a weary magistrate or local copper seeing the same old faces, pathetic recidivists up to their usual petty crimes. More in sorrow than in anger, he went through the motions of criticising a “shocking” United display.

Out of a sense of professionalism and knowing that his viewing public has its expectations, the great man roused himself at half time for a nibble at Casemiro, saying: “Same old problems, leopards and spots, they look very open. Obviously there’s been mistakes. The mistake from Casemiro, for all his experience, that first-time pass, it’s not worth the risk.” But his heart didn’t seem to be in it, quite.

At the end of the match, the most likely target for a trademark Keano two-footer looked, in fact, to be broadcast colleague Daniel Sturridge for saying to their interviewee Mo Salah: “You’ve come back bro, you’ve got a new trim, what’s the vibe?” Keane’s view on this conversation: “That’s not a chat, that is a bromance.” Some of the old Alf-Inge Haaland appetite for destruction briefly flickered when he noticed that the shoeless Salah had come for the post-match discussion in his stockinged feet; Roy growled “I’ll be careful I don’t stand on your foot”. We think he was joking. To both Salah and Arne Slot, Keane asked, with genuine curiosity it seemed, variations of “did you think it would be this easy?”

Neville meanwhile had abandoned his chippy sergeant major style and was intoning balefully about the “sobering sight” of the stadium emptying with several minutes still to play. He even murmured some sympathies about how hard it has been for Erik ten Hag and others to follow Sir Alex Ferguson and called for patience. Perhaps Gary is experimenting with compassion.

The performance of Casemiro put one in mind, in fact, of Gary’s own late-career shocker, against West Brom on New Year’s Day 2011 when he was run ragged by a left winger he would once have kept in his pocket. He said that the Hawthorns “horror show” made him realise that it was over for him as a player. It remains to be seen if some of the current lot will recognise this display as such but it was striking, watching this on Sunday, that neither he nor Keane singled anyone out for the treatment.

As Roy also said: “You can have an off-day but for the game to be over for half an hour if you are playing for Man United, it’s very disappointing.” Once Keane and Neville got together for the mob-handed final wrap-up with Dave Jones, Jamie Carragher, and Sturridge, they managed to get on each other’s nerves sufficiently to generate a bit of needle and talk hotly over each other, but really it felt like a couple of old luvs doing their turn.

Purely from a TV point of view, the clear and gaping gulf between United and the good sides is becoming potentially bad for business. This was the first marquee fixture of the season – if you accept that Chelsea’s transitional period disqualifies their August match against Manchester City from being truly box office – but it was actually a bit of a damp squib for the neutral.

Also on Sky on Sunday, we had England putting Sri Lanka out of their misery in front of a quarter-full Lord’s and while it would obviously be silly to equate a United fixture with that mismatch just yet, you do start to wonder how long this freefall can go on if they are to remain football’s biggest broadcast draw. United heartlands from Basingstoke to Bangkok will be full of young fans who could just as well pledge their troth to Real Madrid or PSG or Man City, and United cannot afford to lose out on a generation of consumers. Gary really will lose the rag if that happens.