Roy Keane's new book, 'The Second Half' is only out this Thursday, but the revelations are dripping out.
Keane hinted at the sour relationship that existed between him and Peter Schmeichel in his previous book written with Eamon Dunphy, alluding to Schmeichel's petulant refusal to hand back the captaincy once Keane returned from the cruciate injury. But he has gone into much more detail this time around.
The pair had a fight on the pre-season tour of Hong Kong in 1998. The scuffle was so loud and frenzied that it woke up Bobby Charlton who was sleeping nearby.
I had a bust-up with Peter when we were on a pre-season tour of Asia, in 1998, just after I came back from my cruciate injury. I think we were in Hong Kong. There was drink involved.
"There'd been a little bit of tension between us over the years, for football reasons. Peter would come out shouting at players, and I felt sometimes he was playing up to the crowd: 'Look at me!
The fight, which was suggested by Schmeichel, seems to have been an organised event, designed to 'sort out' the tension between the two. Nicky Butt was even appointed referee.
He was probably doing it for concentration levels, but I felt he did it too often, as if he was telling the crowd: 'Look what I have to deal with'.
He said: 'I've had enough of you, It's time we sorted this out.' So I said 'Okay' and we had a fight. It felt like 10 minutes. There was a lot of noise - Peter's a big lad.
Peter had grabbed me, I'd head-butted him - we'd been fighting for ages.
A groggy Bobby Charlton was woken by the ruckus and this seems to have been the main point of anger for Ferguson, though Keane reckons Sir Bob could been more proactive about calming things.
He (Fergie) told us that we were a disgrace to the club, and that we'd woken Bobby Charlton up, that Bobby had come out of his room and seen us. Peter took responsibility for the fight, which was good. I admired him for it. But Sir Bobby could have tried to break it up.
