It was April 2009, Roy Keane had just been made manager of Ipswich Town and Ricky Sbragia could not stop giggling. The coach placed in charge of Sunderland in the wake of Keane's walkout four months earlier was responding to a reporter who wondered whether Ipswich were taking an unreasonable risk in appointing the Irishman.

"That's a great question," Sbragia said. Then, finally, he remembered to revert to diplomatic platitude speak and launched into a discourse on how much Keane needed football and why football needed the former Manchester United captain.

This undeniably symbiotic relationship was supposed to propel Ipswich back into the Premier League and straight on to the back pages. Instead it has ended with the Suffolk club embroiled in a struggle against relegation and Keane's managerial reputation in tatters.

It seemed to go wrong partly because a man who turns 40 in August failed to shed an arrogance arguably excusable during his glory-suffused youth but singularly unbecoming in one who so wilfully neglected to learn the lessons spelt out during his time at Sunderland.

Full of paradoxes, one of Keane's biggest problems is that he loves football to the point of fixation but harbours a growing hatred for many modern footballers. He increasingly struggled to disguise his contempt for a new breed he often complained cared more about "the Bentleys and the blondes" than their highly lucrative profession.

According to one authoritative account of his final days at Sunderland, his relationship with senior players unravelled to the point where Keane only really appeared to derive any pleasure from escorting promising young schoolboy footballers round the club. When they approached the first-team changing areas, the manager routinely cautioned: "Be careful not to trip over the hair-gel containers." It did not need a psychologist to spot the disillusion in his voice.

It was, accordingly, no surprise to learn that his Ipswich reign was punctuated by numerous reports – most later denied, not always convincingly – of bust-ups between Keane and key players including Pablo Couñago and Jon Walters.

Shortly before he left Sunderland, Keane arrived late for a charity function at the Stadium of Light. When he walked into the room, a senior player said: "Oh no." It seems many of the Ipswich squad felt similarly intimidated and there were persistent reports of professionals failing to sign on at Portman Road due to reservations about the manager.

Of those that did arrive few, bar Grant Leadbitter, were unqualified successes. Many such as Colin Healy – acquired from Cork City but swiftly discarded – proved crashing failures.

Keane's recruitment policy at Sunderland was always hitty-missy but, with appreciably less money, turned out even worse at Ipswich. Perhaps it does not help that he has always admitted he hates the travelling involved in scouting.

Unfortunately he also remains too proud to listen to constructive criticism; at one point Ipswich were very keen for him to hire the former England Under-21 coach Peter Taylor as his assistant but the proposed deal foundered. That probably represented a wrong turn for Keane, who would have benefited immensely from Taylor's advice and support.

If he really wants to stay in management – and some publicity-hungry club may yet give him one more chance – Keane needs to be less preoccupied with precious security measures, such as the fingerprint entry pads he insisting on having installed at Ipswich's training ground, and far more receptive to wise counsel.

Brian Clough has long been his hero but he needs to remember his mentor could be warm and human as well as angry and authoritarian.

Keane, à la Clough, would make a brilliantly peerless television pundit. For the moment at least, though, he is unlikely to accept what will surely be a multitude of offers to appear on the small screen. Instead a man who dreams of morphing into an Irish version of José Mourinho must trust managerial life truly begins at 40.

Maybe, like Mourinho and Steve McClaren, he should subject himself to a culture shock and move abroad, before taking charge of a foreign team. It might just shake Keane out of a self-obsession which, along with an unhealthy intensity, possibly lies at the root of his problems.

Andy Reid, the Sunderland midfielder signed by his former Ireland team-mate, recently reflected: "At the very, very top of football you find people who are almost ridiculously obsessive. Probably a perfect example would be Roy Keane."

This extreme nature took him to the very top as a player but it threatens to be the undoing of Keane the manager.