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Miller’s crossing may be too soon

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

The United manager was shocked at the sheer cheek of the 19-year-old neophyte. So shocked that by the end of that season, shortly after United had won the Cup
Winners’ Cup, he desperately tried to sign Keane in a swap deal that would have sent Neil Webb to the City Ground.
Imagine if that transfer had come off. How many times might Keane have played for United over the following two seasons when Robson was still near his pomp and Paul Ince was in his prime? Would he have developed as quickly in and out of the United side as he subsequently did in the Forest first team? Can anybody say for certain the benefits of training with better players at the Cliff would have outweighed character-forming experiences like a grueling stint at center-half when Forest were struggling?
Moot points maybe but worth considering in the context of the Liam Miller saga. Ridiculous and unfair as it is to compare anyone with Keane (he should be acknowledged as a one-off in the same way that McGrath, Giles and Brady were, and the next journalist who describes Miller as “a long-term replacement for the United captain” should be shot at dawn), the early progression of his career offers instructive parallels.
By the time Keane joined United, he had made well over 100 first-team starts for Forest. Almost every on-field error he made in those first three years was made off-Broadway, where it wasn’t magnified by the media and he was allowed time to learn from each misstep. Consequently, the player who arrived at Old Trafford was far nearer the finished article in the summer of 1993 than he would have been in the summer of 1991. Against that background — that Miller has
started just 16 games for Celtic so far this season — and will probably not be adding to that tally over the next few months, is not a comforting statistic.
For a nation about to spend the next while looking in from the outside at Euro 2004, Manchester United snapping up one of the brightest Irish prospects is a badly needed feel-good story. More confirmation that this country is producing a few players with the right stuff. Yet once the initial euphoria wears off, this is not quite as flattering as Ferguson splurging

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