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Roy Keane accuses Ellis Short of talking to him “like something on the bottom of his shoe” in his explosive new book ‘The Second Half’.

The Black Cats boss lifts the lid on the circumstances surrounding his Sunderland exit – and claims he should have been given more time by Short.

He reveals that the disagreement was over Short questioning on him on whether he was managing Sunderland just one day a week – and says that the Black Cats owner had wanted him to move permanently to the North East with his family.

Keane writes: “While I was driving, the owner rang me.

“He said ‘I hear you’re coming in one day a week. I said ‘One day a week? Who were you talking to?’ ‘Well that’s what I heard.’

“I went ‘It’s nonsense. How could I come in one day a week? I’m on the way up now anyway. We’ve got a game on Saturday’.

“He said he was disappointed with the Bolton game. His tone wasn’t good.

“‘Your location, where you live. You need to move up with your family.

“I was in the third year of a three-year contract. The arrangement - the flat in Durham, my family in Manchester – had suited everyone until now.

“He said: ‘I think it’s important that you live in the area.’

“I’m not sure if I said something like, ‘Why don’t you move up?’ He lived in London. But I did say, ‘I’m not moving. I’m in the last six or seven months of my contract anyway.’

“It might have been a different conversation if we’d been talking face-to-face. Then I might have said, ‘Well if I sign a new contract, I’ll move up. I can understand that.’

“But I said: ‘It’s not affected results previously.’

“The conversation didn’t end well. It was a case of ‘No-one tells me where I should live’ and the accusation that I was only coming in one day a week hung there.

“There is always hearsay about managers at football clubs – there are always rumours. ‘He comes in at seven in the morning’ - ‘He’s sleeping with a girl in the office’ - ‘He’s a big drinker’. They’re always there - he’s a loner - ‘he’s too friendly with the players’. I’d lived through my career with those rumours.”

He says the end was brutal and unexpected.

He writes: “If Ellis Short actually thought that I was trying to run the team one a day a week he should have arranged to see me. I thought he was talking down to me, he spoke to me like I was something on the bottom of his shoe. I felt I’d been doing reasonably well, so far. So I thought: ‘I’m not putting up with this’.

“I drove home. I phoned Michael Kennedy in the car.

“‘Listen Michael, I’m not having all of this.’

“Michael spoke to Niall (Quinn). Niall wasn’t sure why the conversation between myself and Ellis Short had ended so badly. “Apparently Ellis Short was surprised I was so upset.

“And before I knew it – it was over.”

Keane admits that he felt he was always on a hiding to nothing with Short, who had not been the owner when Keane had helped the team gain promotion.

He writes: “A bad spell is always coming. But I think I’d earned the right to get through that spell. Again – it was weeks, not months.

“But Ellis Short was new - and I wasn’t his manager. He owed me nothing. He wasn’t there when we were promoted. I’d done nothing for him yet. I should have read that script a little bit better.

“It’s probably true that the working relationship was never going to work, and not because he was some big, bad Texan and I was some grumpy Northsider from Cork. I don’t like being spoken down to.”

He also reveals that Steve Bruce had rung to ask if he should take the Black Cats job and Keane recommended the role.

Keane’s new book ‘The Second Half’ is out on Thursday.