After spending more than a decade at Manchester United, winning seven Premier League titles, few would have begrudged Roy Keane a farewell on his own terms.
Instead, as we now know, the former Nottingham Forest star left Old Trafford under a cloud after an explosive MUTV interview in which he tore into his teammates.
Before then, however, he was dealt the injury blow which would keep him sidelined and allow that frustration to build.
Manchester United ’s trip to Anfield in September 2005 wasn’t a classic, as far as games between the two great rivals are concerned. However, it would - though we didn’t know as much at the time - act as Keane’s last hurrah.
Liverpool were the happier of the two sides at the end of the previous season. Rafa Benitez’s men had famously won the Champions League, while United - so used to winning trophies - had finished the campaign empty-handed.
The visitors had been doing all they could to avoid a repeat, though. United’s first four games of the season had brought 10 points and just one goal conceded, while they made it past Debrecen in a play-off to seal their place in the Champions League.
Benitez’s men also needed to come through qualifying to make it into Europe, albeit three rounds of games to the single play-off faced by Sir Alex Ferguson’s team. They hadn’t quite kicked into gear domestically, with a win and two draws from their first three outings, but their defence was yet to be breached.
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In truth, the game didn't provide too much of note. There were more half-chances than full ones, with neither Edwin van der Sar nor Pepe Reina caused too much trouble, and it ended goalless.
Keane had been a doubt for the game, having sat out the Champions League draw with Villarreal just four days earlier with a hamstring problem. However, he was fit to take his place in the centre of midfield alongside Alan Smith.
He showed few effects of that injury during an energetic battle with Steven Gerrard, but his afternoon ended early for different reasons. The Irish international was withdrawn after a late challenge from Liverpool forward Luis Garcia and, when the dust settled, a broken metatarsal - the most early 2000s of football injuries - was the upshot.
There was some debate, though, as to whether it was Garcia or teammate Peter Crouch who was the guilty party. Crouch had come down on top of Keane's foot earlier the game, while apparently wearing bladed boots, and Ferguson made his feelings clear the following week.
"It's something we feel very strongly about," the United boss said, as reported at the time by The Irish Times. "We banned blades a year ago, as most clubs have, and we have got pictures around the training ground of the serious injuries they can cause. Yet Roy's X-ray clearly shows the impression of a blade where the injury is."
An absence of two months was forecast, while the injury accelerated an international retirement which had already looked close. After the drama in Saipan during the 2002 World Cup, Keane had returned to the Ireland fold in an effort to get them to the 2006 tournament, but the metatarsal injury ruled him out of the must-win qualifier at home to Switzerland and he called it a day after his teammates could only draw 0-0 at Lansdowne Road.
His Man Utd departure would soon follow, with the final straw being that MUTV segment so potentially damaging that the club sought to destroy the tape. Keane tore into his teammates after an October defeat against Middlesbrough, and they would soon be his ex-teammates as he left for Celtic.
Rather than a full goodbye with a chance to wave to fans from the pitch - not that this would have been Keane's style - United's number 16 left with a whimper, leaving the field late in the Liverpool game and never returning. After 12 years and 480 appearances, it all felt a bit, well, sudden.
Things would end up getting even worse for United when the teams met in the FA Cup a few months later. That was the game in which Smith, Keane's midfield partner in the league clash, suffered a broken leg attempting to block a John Arne Riise free-kick.
Keane, like Smith, was never quite the same after that injury. His Celtic spell lasted just 13 games, and he would later admit his love for the game was gone when he left Old Trafford. He might not have wanted huge fanfare around his final days, but a career that decorated surely deserved a better send-off.
