Kevin Keegan left the ground consumed by anger yesterday and with an expression that said: do not disturb. The Manchester City manager had enjoyed his side's stirring fightback, as they recovered from being two goals down with 10 minutes remaining having already had a player sent off, but any sense of satisfaction was tempered by the realisation that City's season is threatening to be undermined by indiscipline, on and off the field.
Do not expect Danny Tiatto or Richard Dunne to play for Keegan again after this wild and eccentric encounter. Dunne was suspended on the morning of the match after the latest boozy misdemeanour of his painfully immature career. The red card that Tiatto earned for his two-foot lunge into David Thompson's midriff, just six minutes after coming on as a second-half substitute, can only be described as an act of thuggery, a fourth sending-off for City and one that places his future at the club into serious jeopardy.
Keegan made that clear in his post-match analysis but refused to elaborate on the reasons for suspending Dunne. City, however, have never been very good at keeping secrets and it emerged that the defender failed to arrive in time for training on Friday, having allegedly been drinking into the early hours.
Initially, he had been out with his parents, who were visiting from Dublin, and afterwards he went on with friends to several establishments in the Alderley Edge and Hale Barns area so favoured by Manchester's footballers.
Keegan fined Dunne for a similar offence last season and is acutely aware that the Republic of Ireland defender was one of the players implicated in the allegations of a fags-and-booze culture at the club under the previous man ager Joe Royle. When Dunne finally turned up, Keegan smelt alcohol on him and immediately sent him home. The chairman David Bernstein discussed the matter with the other directors at the weekend before deciding, with Keegan's backing, that Dunne should be suspended for a fortnight.
"We're having a board meeting this week and we will decide our next course of action then," said Keegan. "It's not the first time he has broken club rules, but it may be the last."
He was even more scathing about Tiatto, a player whose hot-headedness belies his talent. "I can't abide people doing things like that," said Keegan. "I've got not qualms about the sending-off and I will fine him the maximum that I can. Those sort of players are no good to anybody. I'm disgusted with him. As far as I'm concerned, Danny Tiatto doesn't exist."
The only surprise in fact, was that Thompson was not badly injured. "If one of my players had received a tackle like that, I would have been absolutely livid," Keegan added. "It was so unprofessional and so stupid and I won't put up with that sort of thing at my club."
Keegan will not need reminding that this was the third successive game in which a City player has been sent off, even if Shaun Wright-Phillips had his red card against Everton rescinded on appeal. Astonishingly Tiatto also received a standing ovation as he left the field three-quarters of the way into a match which once again demonstrated that when it comes to defending, City have a glass jaw.
Marc-Vivien Foé, a player capable of an infuriating range of reckless mistakes, was culpable for the first goal, playing what should have been a simple pass to Sun Jihai straight into the path of Thompson. The midfielder, with a drop of his shoulder and a change of pace, cut from left to right before driving an emphatic shot beyond Peter Schmeichel.
Then Wright-Phillips carelessly squandered possession in his own half nine minutes after half-time, and the ball was worked forward for Andy Cole to score his first of the season. Rovers were in total command and seemingly destined to inflict City's first home defeat since Wimbledon won here almost 12 months ago.
Only in the final stages did City raise themselves. With the first fans already drifting homewards, Ali Benarbia and Eyal Berkovic teed up Nicolas Anelka to score with a shot that took a deflection off Lucas Neill and then, in the final minute of normal time, Sylvain Distin whipped in a cross from the left and the substitute Shaun Goater scuffed it past Brad Friedel. With City maybe the best policy is to expect the unexpected.
"The contrast between the attitudes of Shaun Goater and Danny Tiatto couldn't have been more marked," Keegan added. "Shaun has more of a case for being annoyed than Danny but he came on with a positive approach, which is exactly what I expected."
Not for the first time this season, and probably not the last, Graeme Souness also failed to conceal his annoyance. "It wasn't brilliance by them, it was dopiness by us," the Rovers manager said. "We played well, contained City, our game-plan was correct . . . so to blow it like that against a team with 10 players was crazy. The vast majority give 110% every time they go out. One or two of them didn't do that today. It makes you wonder whether some of them know the game of football."
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