Roy Keane ranks ‘nasty’ former Newcastle star below Harry Kane in heated striker debate
On the latest episode of Stick to Football, Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher, Jill Scott, Ian Wright and Roy Keane ranked the greatest England strikers of all time.
The four players being ranked were Wayne Rooney, Harry Kane, Alan Shearer and Michael Owen.
It was unanimously decided by all five pundits that Rooney sits at the top of that list and Owen at the bottom in fourth.
However, there was a disagreement over whether Kane should be above Shearer. Neville opened the debate by placing Shearer in second place, but Carragher disagreed and argued that Kane is the superior striker.
“His numbers are far better at international level,” Carragher said when making the argument for Kane.
“He’s been a top goalscorer at a World Cup, he’s gone abroad and is playing for one of the biggest clubs in the world and is absolutely smashing the records to bits.
“He’s played for Tottenham, who’ve never been the best team, and his record in the Premier League is as good as Shearer’s.”
Keane backed up Carragher and also placed Kane second on his list, ahead of Shearer.
It’s safe to say that the former United midfielder hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with Shearer and that became apparent in this latest episode.
“Shearer was sneaky, sneaky elbows,” Keane began.
“I didn’t admire people who were nasty, I don’t like nasty people. He was nasty, with sneaky elbows in the back of the head.
“[Eric] Cantona, [Andy] Cole, all these strikers that I played with weren’t sneaky, [they were] good honest pros.”
Ultimately, the Overlap team placed Shearer higher than Kane on their list as Neville, Wright and Scott all fought the Newcastle legends’ corner.
Keane’s stance on Shearer didn’t come as a massive surprise, given the squabbles that the pair have had since the early 2000s.
The pair notably clashed during a game at St James’ Park in 2001, when Keane was shown a red card for taking a swing at the striker.
During a separate podcast back in April, Keane admitted that the BBC pundit still gets on his nerves to this day.
“People annoy me! Do you know what, I think I got fined two weeks wages for that,” Keane explained.
“I’m still annoyed with Wes for that OG at the end. The referee didn’t help.
“One in particular, yeah, and he [Shearer] still annoys me.”
While Shearer has spoken fondly of Keane in recent years, he’s also admitted that he didn’t like him during his playing days.
“Yeah, I didn’t like him,” Shearer said on the Match of the Day podcast in 2021.
“I had loads of rucks with him and I wasn’t the only one.
“It was a throw-in in the far corner where I stopped him taking an early throw. We were beating them at St. James’ and he wanted to take a quick throw-in and he’d been at me all game as he normally was.
“It was about three of four minutes before the end of the game. I can’t remember exactly what I said, I called him some sort of name.
“He got the red card and I remember having a little smile and thought ‘I’ve done you a kipper here. I can’t believe you’ve fallen into that little trap.'”
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