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"They had it all ready," Roy Keane reflected in The Second Half . "It was another little hand grenade they threw at me. Not an hour later, or two hours, or after the severance negotiations – it was already written.

"I said to Ferguson, 'Can I play for somebody else?' And he said, 'Yeah you can, cos we’re tearing up your contract.'"

Keane had spent over 12 years at Manchester United . He was the man who captained them to four Premier League titles and an FA Cup, the instigator behind that stirring fight back in Turin, and their leader during United's greatest season.

After a few fraught months under Sir Alex Ferguson and Carlos Queiroz, Keane's contract was torn up while he was injured. Ferguson said when Keane's anger simmered his eyes 'started to narrow, almost to wee black beads', like a shark's eyes. Those eyes shed tears in the Carrington car park when Keane left in November 2005.

Bastian Schweinsteiger, like Keane, will be remembered as one of his generation's greatest midfielders who produced his own Herculean performance in a World Cup final. He is not a great United midfielder, though, and some soppy supporters need to get over his treatment under Jose Mourinho.

In Germany, Mourinho has been savaged over his management of a player United teammates initially dubbed 'Mr.Calm'. 'Degraded on his birthday' was a headline on Abendzeitung , while Bild wrote 'Mourinho humiliates Schweini'.

Schweinsteiger arguably humiliated United. He followed his wife, Ana Ivanovic, to Dubai, Miami, Stuttgart and Rome during the four months he was injured earlier this year. Keane's quote on Michael Owen's extra-curricular activities while crocked springs to mind: "Work on your recovery, man."

The former Bayern Munich talisman seemed just as happy on matchdays in a club suit as he was in a club kit, glad-handing VIPs while collecting in the region of £200,000-a-week. It was curious to notice Schweinsteiger was the only United player in a Cup final suit to clutch the trophy and join in with the dressing celebrations at Wembley. A younger player could have been forgiven for posing with the trophy, yet Cameron Borthwick-Jackson, Timothy Fosu-Mensah, Memphis and Luke Shaw watched on sheepishly.

Mourinho spoke nonchalantly at Carrington when asked to clarify Schweinsteiger's situation. "I think what is happening is happening in every club in the world, which is the manager decides his squad and chooses a certain number of players to face the season and that's it."

Some have already suggested Mourinho's handling of the suggestion is not 'the United way', a blinkered myth perpetuated by romantics. Ferguson left David Beckham needing stitches, labelled journalists 'f*****g idiots', dubbed the portly former referee Jeff Winter a 'f*****g joke', questioned Italians' integrity and a referee's fitness. You need to be tough and confrontational as a United manager.

Schweinsteiger's sympathisers might not commiserating when Adidas tweet a picture of Paul Pogba in a United kit. United cannot afford to carry passengers if they are to regain the Premier League and Ferguson knew that when he took the nuclear option to burn bridges with Keane.

Ferguson was unpopular with factions of United's support when he discarded Keane in the autumn of 2005. Months into the Glazer family's ownership of United, the Scot had been pictured laughing and joking with the Americans, told hardcore United supporters who confronted him in Budapest to 'go and support Chelsea' and presided over gutless defeats to Middlesbrough and Lille. Keane, whose evisceration of his teammates while analysing the Boro battering on MUTV was leaked to the press, had become the mouthpiece of United fans.

Yet Ferguson's decision to jettison Keane benefited United. In the next three seasons without Keane, United won a hat-trick of Premier Leagues, the Champions League, the Club World Cup and the League Cup.

Ferguson made much tougher decisions than Mourinho and treated other genuinely great United players harshly. Ruud van Nistelrooy was told to go home on the day of United's last game of the 2005-06 campaign against Charlton and not to turn up for Keane's testimonial days later. Van Nistelrooy had scored 150 goals in five seasons and was the club's best goalscoring centre forward since Denis Law. Many United fans who had the privilege to watch him would have him in their all-time XIs.

Jaap Stam spoke of 'unfair treatment' following the publication of his autobiography in which he claimed he was 'tapped up' by United while a PSV Eindhoven player.

"After the publication it was all over for me. Ferguson said that wasn't the case but I know what he is like," Stam said at the time. Stam was a Treble winner, not a 30-something who had managed 21 starts.

There are other instances. Wayne Rooney was fined and dropped over a festive night out ahead of United's New Year's Eve defeat to Blackburn in 2011, yet another senior player who was necking shots in Manchester city centre was not punished.

Paul Ince was dubbed a 'Scouse b*****d' by United fans following his 1997 move to Liverpool, but even Ferguson regretted labelling him a 'big-time Charlie' in a recorded team-talk for ITV's gripping The Alex Ferguson Story.

Keane, Van Nistelrooy, Stam, Rooney and Ince are just five brilliant players who suffered harsh and, certainly in Stam's case, unjust treatment which did not benefit the team. They contributed to United's most glorious eras, whereas Schweinsteiger's outstanding contribution was a nudge on Darren Randolph which kept United in the FA Cup.

Mourinho did not even throw a hand grenade.