IT WAS the week of the long goodbye. No sooner had Manchester United said farewell to the League Cup - a disappointment above all for the second-string players - than the seniors were wishing bon voyage to an old friend, Brian Kidd.
While there had been genuine sadness at Kidd's final send-off, the calendar moves on, ever unsentimental. The truth is that a far deeper hurt will pierce United hearts should they have to bid auf Wiedersehen to Europe in three days' time.
Their assignment tolerates little distraction. To be certain of progress in the Champions League, United must beat Bayern Munich at Old Trafford. Naturally, Alex Ferguson, United's manager, would rather Kidd had timed this particular run into space otherwise, but he cannot help feel encouraged by the strengthening links elsewhere in his chain of command.
A few hours after Kidd's last salute on Friday at The Cliff, the club's training ground, Roy Keane, the captain, generously outlined the assistant manager's contribution over the five years of his own career at United, but was nevertheless anxious to turn minds quickly to business pending. "That's the thing about this club, there's a different challenge every week," he said. "There's always something round the corner." Spoken with his master's voice.
What lurks around the corner on Wednesday is the sort of occasion in which Keane especially appreciates his involvement. He was absent, through suspension and injury, for each of Manchester United's last two European Cup D-Days, against Borussia Dortmund in the 1997 semi-final and against Monaco, a stage earlier, last March. That, he says, hurt him.
As recently as August, too, there was reason enough to worry about his readiness to take on the continent's most demanding first-round obstacles this year. The path back from cruciate ligament surgery can be a hazardous one, yet Keane's successful recovery from a 10-month lay-off has been no less galvanising for Ferguson's team than Dwight Yorke's arrival as supplier of the pyrotechnics.
One by one, the qualities which make him these islands' most rounded midfield footballer appear to have returned: the fearlessness, the athleticism, the discipline of his distribution; the timing, both in the tackle and in his surges into opposition territory.
Is Keane delighted by his progress, then? "I'm just about content with it," he says, carefully. "I still feel there's a lot more to come. But then anybody at this time in the season will be still wanting to improve. In terms of the injury, yes, I've got to be quite content. I've got back into the team, managed to stay there and we've done reasonably well. It does take its time getting back to peak, but it helps when the team are doing well; you can blend in. If the team had been struggling, then people might have pointed the finger."
Accurately, last season they were pointing it at Keane's absence and the trophies missing from Old Trafford. Cautiously, Keane makes another comparison between then and now: "This time last season United were in exactly the same position as we are now and ended up with nothing. Football has a habit of blowing up in your face. We're experienced enough not to get carried away."
Add to the Keane checklist, then, a sharpened perspective. Keane's difficult and frustrating 27th year has matured him, he says. From the end of September 1997 to the close season, he had been out of action.
Famously - and memorably - he sustained his injury as a result of his own ill-advised, and illegitimate, challenge on Leeds United's Norwegian international, Alf-Inge Haaland. For a man who plays his football like Keane, it required no great imagination to interpret the episode as a parable. "Things happen for a reason," he says. "I believe a lot in fate and I know for a fact that what's happened to me has made me appreciate the game a lot more. I hope I'm that little bit wiser."
Does he have regrets? "Everybody's got regrets but it's all 'ifs' and 'ands'. And, as they say in Ireland, if 'ifs' and 'ands' were pots and pans there'd be money for tinkers. So, no regrets . . . but of course I wish it hadn't bloody happened."
The Haaland incident and its consequences have been consigned, he says, to the back of his mind, although a suggestion of "afters" momentarily clouded last Sunday's match against Leeds.
When Keane appealed for a penalty he and his old rival came face to face. It was a time to test new resolutions: "Alfie came running up to me and I just thought, 'What's it got to do with you?' There's always a bit of tension against Leeds and you can have run-ins with any players. There won't be any malice on my behalf.
"You have to try not to get involved. Sometimes it takes away from your own play a little bit if you do. But that doesn't mean that tomorrow somebody's not going to try and wind you up a little bit and you might lose your rag. I'd like to just think I'm trying a lot harder. Simple as that." It sounds a good basis for a new year resolution.
As for the physical rehabilitation, his influence and industry this season speak for themselves: "I've done all the tests and my leg is as strong as ever. In terms of fitness, I feel as welI as I've ever done." He is covering all the old mileage box-to-box, a role appreciated not least by the two newer members of the United team - behind Keane, Jaap Stam; and in front of him, Yorke.
"Some games I do feel I've got more licence to go forward," says Keane, "other times that I've got to cover. It needs one of the midfielders to sit back. A lot of the players we've got are a lot more attack-minded than me. If there's a chance for me to get forward, I will."
One or two theorists, Gary Lineker among them, have lately been taken with the idea of Keane at centre-half. That may be when he's into his 30s, the Irishman smiles, and only in emergencies: "It's too boring. I want to be where the action is."
Besides, a wider responsibility becomes him. The Ireland team, who appointed Keane their captain as soon as he recovered fitness, have seen a similarly forceful return. Again, the Irish Euro 2000 campaign had been "okay", but could be better.
Keane talks a little as he plays, briskly, and with the odd hard flash of the rapier's blade. United have been let down by inconsistency in Europe this season, he maintains, and experience must be their alibi this week, against a Bayern team with an abundance of the stuff spread about the Matthäuses, the Helmers, the Effenbergs, and the same coach, Ottmar Hitzfeld, who took Borussia Dortmund past United as Keane watched from the stand two seasons ago. "It's hard to miss any game," he recalls, "but that night especially so."
Certainly, Hitzfeld felt grateful for Keane's absence in Manchester for that tie's second leg, in which Dortmund held an early advantage against chance after chance for United.
A wholehearted admirer of Keane's dynamic talents, the Bayern coach tends to build his own team around energetic midfielders, witness Paul Lambert at Dortmund and Jens Jeremies at Munich. Certainly, Keane will be worked hard on Wednesday. "Bayern are a typical German team in a lot of ways," he says. "They're strong physically and good technically. We were a bit unlucky at the end of our 2-2 draw over there, although overall they would probably have thought they'd deserved the game. We both had opportunities to win, but that's how it is at the top level. You have to take them. Look at Monaco against us last season - they took their one chance and we were out."
There are lessons in those precedents, insists Keane: "It's about concentration and experience. If you don't learn, you should be out of the bloody game. It's all about picking up things. We've got a lot of internationals in this side. Maybe we had the excuse for the last few years that we had a lot of young players - or at least that was something which was thrown at United. We've got to get rid of that excuse. They've all played in a World Cup. We've no excuses this time."
No more talk of kids, then. Keane, though, had several thoughts on Kiddo, as United's players knew their departed assistant manager. Keane will miss Kidd's influence as much as anyone. An enthusiastic trainer himself, he appreciated the rigour and variety of his coaching. Kidd's cajoling, too, helped Keane through the last year. Long-term injury is the footballer's equivalent of a divorce; Kidd played the counsellor, a lifter of lowering spirits.
"When you know it's going to be nine or 10 months out, you get close to being depressed," recalls Keane. "Kiddo was the man who used to come in and have a bit of banter. The gaffer [Ferguson] does keep at arm's length from the players. That's what suited Kiddo here."
It also suited Keane, a footballer who has grown up under the (sometimes necessarily severe) authority of Brian Clough and then of Ferguson.
Keane and Kidd were close enough, too, for the captain to sense the lieutenant's enthusiasm for personal promotion. "When the rumour started last week, I just had a feeling he would take it. As a coach he's got all the qualities. It's obviously a big step up being a manager, but if anyone can, Kiddo can. He's decided for his own reasons he wants to be a manager and we have to respect him for that. But it's going to be a helluva loss to this club," said Keane.
"We need to pick ourselves up," he continued. "Kiddo will be missed. On the other hand, we've got a game against Bayern on Wednesday. We're straight into it and I'm sure he'll wish us all the best. Without him we probably wouldn't be there at all. But players move club, managers come and go, whatever. The club goes on and on for hundreds of years; people involved in it won't be. Footballers are funny like that. The game can be quite cruel in that way, you know."
It will seem all the more so if United's vibrant European campaign does not carry them into the knockout stage. For all the goals - 19 of them in the five Group D matches so far - leads have been conceded, mistakes made in defence and in goal. "We always do it the bloody hard way," smiles Keane. "If we'd won any of the games at Barcelona and Bayern, we'd be through. Maybe the fans even like that a little bit, being on tenterhooks. It would be nice if we scored in the 90th minute, eh?"
It would be nicer still if United refrained from conceding a goal within the first five.
