"I loved every minute of my time at Manchester United. I loved everything about being a Manchester United player, the players, the pressure, the club, working with the manager, working with the people in the background.

"It is a fantastic club and if any player gets the chance to play for them, they have to take it. I feel as though I was born to play there. It was something that I felt was always going to happen.''

Roy Keane, August 2007

THEY might have boasted some of the greatest footballers ever to play the game in Great Britain, but for a short period at the turn of the century, Roy Keane was Manchester United.

He was the living, breathing lifeblood of a footballing institution that had grown to be the biggest in the world. He was the personification of a winning mentality that had swept the club to an historic treble and established Old Trafford as the epicentre of the English game.

And then, within the space of a few years, he was gone. Gone, but as this afternoon's home game with his new employers, Sunderland, will show, anything but forgotten.

When Keane strides out from the unfamiliar environs of Old Trafford's away dressing room later today, the ground will rise as one to acclaim one of its greatest heroes.

It will pay homage to some of his most memorable displays in a Manchester United shirt - performances such as 2001's epic outing against Juventus in the semi-finals of the Champions League and 2005's masterly demolition of Arsenal's Patrick Vieira at Highbury - and serenade a former skipper who headed the most successful side in the club's history.

It will also reclaim a character who will always be an honorary Red. Keane might have committed himself to Sunderland when he took over from Niall Quinn last August, but his association with Manchester United will never come to an end.

"I'll never get away from my history, and I hope I never do," said the Sunderland manager. "It's a part of my life, part of my history, and there's no getting away from that.

"Manchester United is a very well-run machine and a fantastic football club. It's a great, great club and it was a massive part of my life."

IT is all but unthinkable now, but Keane would not even have been a Manchester United player had it not been for a last-minute change of heart in 1993.

Having agreed to join Blackburn from Nottingham Forest, the Irishman had already agreed terms with Kenny Dalglish when he received a phone call from Alex Ferguson.

"'Roy, it's Alex Ferguson here. Have you signed any forms?'

"'No, but I shook hands on the deal, and I'm due to sign the forms tomorrow.'

"'Why don't you come to Manchester and have a chat with me before you do anything?'

"'Yes, but I have agreed the deal'.

"'You've signed nothing. Come over for a chat."

And so, over a game of snooker which Keane conveniently lost on the black, began one of the most successful relationships in football.

The midfielder would win seven league titles, four FA Cups, four Charity Shields and a Champions League during his 13 years at Old Trafford, and captain the side for eight successive seasons as they swept all before them on the domestic stage.

His unquenchable will to win shoe-horned perfectly with Ferguson's relentless pursuit of success, and the pair quickly formed one of the tightest relationships in the game.

They didn't always exist in perfect harmony, with Keane's volatility ultimately persuading Ferguson to hasten his exit in 2005, but their mutual respect remains obvious even after all that has happened.

When Ferguson describes a leading midfielder, he invariably compares them with Keane. When Keane speaks of his own managerial development, he invariably uses Ferguson as his template for success.

"When you work with people and see them close at hand, you can tell whether they've got it or not," said Keane. "Alex Ferguson obviously has it.

"He has upset a lot of people over the years because of his winning attitude and mentality, but he won't let anybody get in his way and prevent him from doing what he wants to do.

"Some people don't like that, but I don't mind it at all because you need that if you're going to manage a big club like Manchester United.

"It's got to the stage now where it's difficult to think of Manchester United without him. He's done a fantastic job and I count my blessings that I had the opportunity to work with him. I'd like to think I've taken something from that, and I'm applying it to what I'm doing here."

A knowledge of Ferguson's methodology is not the only thing Keane has taken from Old Trafford. Most of the people he has surrounded himself with at Sunderland have also spent time at Manchester United in the past.

"There's Danny (Higginbotham), Yorkie (Dwight Yorke), Coley (Andy Cole), Liam (Miller), Paul (McShane) and Kieran (Richardson)," he rattled off earlier this week.

"Then on the staff side there's Neil Bailey (first-team coach), Mike Clegg (strength and conditioning coach) and Raimond van der Gouw (goalkeeping coach).

"They are usually winners otherwise they wouldn't have been at United in the first place. But I have not necessarily come out of my way to bring ex-United players and staff to the club."

That is as maybe, but Keane's willingness to return to his former employers is hardly co-incidental.

He retains a deep-rooted admiration for the structure and ethos of the reigning champions, and is already modelling Sunderland's backroom set-up on the system he grew accustomed to at Old Trafford.

There are the photographs at the training ground, the club suits for away games and the overnight hotel visits on the eve of every fixture.

There is the need for total commitment on the training ground and the demand that one success is immediately followed by another.

As a result, there will be a sense later today that the whole of the Sunderland squad are in some way going home.

Ultimately, though, the most celebrated homecoming will be Keane's. The 36-year-old has returned to Old Trafford once since joining Celtic in 2005, to watch Chelsea defeat Blackburn in last season's FA Cup semi-final, and his presence elicited a frenzied response from those around him.

This afternoon's reaction is likely to be even more intense, and even as icy a character as Keane could momentarily lose his cool.

"To be perfectly honest, I haven't got a clue how I'll feel," he claimed.

"United fans always seem to be generous with ex-players but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

"The fans always appreciated my efforts when I was there, and I loved every minute of my time playing in front of them.

"But just as I think I was born to play for Manchester United, so I believe I was born to manage Sunderland.

"If you had said to me when I left that within a year I would have packed in playing and be manager of Sunderland, I probably wouldn't have believed you. But sometimes, I believe that the man upstairs has great plans for me."

Today, Old Trafford will rise as one to express gratitude that those plans have involved Manchester United and Sunderland.