Former Crystal Palace owner Simon Jordan has questioned why Sunderland should look to appoint Roy Keane for a second spell as manager.
The Manchester United legend has been identified by the Black Cats as their number one target to replace Lee Johnson, who was dismissed following a humiliating six-goal defeat at Bolton Wanderers.
Keane began his managerial career at the Stadium of Light in 2006 and remains hugely popular among supporters, having guided the club from the Championship relegation zone back into the Premier League.
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However, the 50-year-old has not worked as a manager since leaving Ipswich Town in 2011, with later spells as an assistant with the Republic of Ireland, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest.
Keane has now established himself as a prominent media pundit, and talkSPORT presenter Jordan has questioned why Black Cats chairman Kyril Louis-Drefus would target a move for the former Red Devils captain at this stage.
Below is a full transcript of the exchange between host Jim White and Jordan covering Keane's potential return on Thursday's edition of the 'White and Jordan' show.
JW: It has to be remembered Keane took Sunderland from the Championship relegation zone to the Premier League during a two-year spell in charge from 2006.
He hasn't been in management as such since he left Ipswich in 2011. There's been a bunch of assistant positions.
We've got to know Roy a bit more now watching him on Sky Sports. Is he ready for another managerial challenge? Is this the right fit?
SJ: I'm sure if he's putting himself in the mix, he's ready. I'm not sure it's the right fit.
This is a young chairman, and I'm not sure that he will know what he's getting into because I think there's been difficulties with Roy and more experienced owners in the time he had at Sunderland and Ipswich.
Roy's perceived management style is to be up and at them, and certainly Sunderland probably need a bit of a kick up the backside.
I'm not sure. I find myself a little bit full of reservations on this one. The mix of a young chairman looking at someone that may be iconic in their playing image once upon a time...
I think if you look at his management record, it isn't great. It was a bit of a disaster at Ipswich.
JW: He had a good record at Sunderland.
SJ: Yeah, he did. He had a really good record in the first season where he did something similar to Iain Dowie at [Crystal] Palace.
He took Sunderland from third or fourth-bottom in the league to promotion in the first season, Dowie did the same thing at Palace.
But he proved to be a bit of a one-trick pony, and I think in that instance so did Roy. I think the following season, they weren't great if my recollection is right.
I think Ipswich was just a disaster, he puts it down to being sold a pup and ultimately Marcus Evans said one thing at one stage and did a completely different thing when he was in the door.
I worry for this one, I'm not sure this is the answer. That might just be because I've got this idea of Roy being a pantomime villain on television, taking a certain stance because it separates him from the other pundits, perhaps doing the same thing in the dugout and also not having a particularly overly au-fait chairman with the vagaries and peculiarities of these football guys.
JW: You don't take his punditry into account when making a decision like this, do you?
SJ: I think you take all factors into account.
JW: You take into account what he says on Sky?
SJ: You have to because it's part and parcel of the body of evidence that you have. What you have is you'll see Roy Keane in an interview, then you see Roy Keane as the player and the reputation that goes before him.
Then you see him in the media, so you put all of those things into your thinking. You don't necessarily put more weight to one than the other, the most weight you'll give is to the guy sat in front of you.
The one thing you can't buy in life is experience, so you can ask someone a question that someone else has told you to ask them. But you can't decipher the answer properly if you haven't had the experience to understand what that answer really means.
JW: I get what you're saying. What Roy Keane isn't doing is speaking to Simon Jordan. What Roy Keane is doing is speaking to 25-year-old Kyril-Louis Dreyfus.
SJ: That's slightly my concern. I don't know who this young man has got around him, what football operators he has got around him.
I hope he's got the right ones, because they'll help him in the process. Somewhere along the line, we've all got to gain experience.
You can't say he's inexperienced, so he's always going to make the wrong decisions. You've got some brains about you.
There's no reason to look at Roy besides it being Roy Keane and once upon a time he managed this club, because we haven't seen him do anything meaningful in the dugout for any period of time.
All we've seen and heard is confrontation, whether it was with the Republic of Ireland players, difficulties at Nottingham Forest.
Nothing we've seen Roy being involved with on a managerial level, whether it be one step removed from being a manager in the last five or six years, gives you any indication that's the guy.
JW: He's still got an appetite to work and that's commendable. Roy doesn't need to do that.
SJ: That's fine, and I'm not criticising Roy in any way shape or form. Of course he has got an appetite to work, and so he should have.
He's a football man. He wants to be involved in football, otherwise you wouldn't be seeing him constantly involved with the media. He doesn't want to be a media person, he wants to be a football person I suspect.
With that in mind, that's the character he exudes off the television. But it's not about what he wants, it's about what is right for Sunderland. What he wants is irrelevant.
The fact he wants it, great. You wouldn't want to be knocking on his door and saying fancy coming work for us, and he goes no thank you.
Whether you like it or you don't like it, chairmans do have to manage their managers in a certain way, and I'm not sure how you manage Roy Keane at this stage in your football development as an owner.
JW: Even after everything you've been through, could you work with Roy? Could you manage him?
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SJ: If I appointed him and I felt he had the juice in the interview, of course I could manage him. Whether that management would bring about an ultimate outcome we both enjoyed is a different matter.
But if I gave him the job, I'd like to think the communication lines were absolutely explicit. We both knew where our lanes were, and we both ran down them and stayed in them.
