'I wanted to sign for Sunderland' - Robbie Savage gives his side of Roy Keane voicemail story

Robbie Savage has given his side of the infamous Roy Keane voicemail story, admitting he wanted to sign for Sunderland at that time.

Keane famously tried to approach Savage, who was then at Blackburn, about signing in the January of his second season in charge at Wearside.

It was all going so well until he tried actually phoning him.

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Telling the story in his autobiography The Second Half, Keane wrote: “I rang Mark Hughes. Robbie [Savage] wasn’t in the Blackburn team and I asked Mark if we could try to arrange a deal.

“Sparky said, ‘Yeah, yeah he’s lost his way here but he could still do a job for you’.

“Robbie’s legs were going a bit but I thought he might come up to us [at Sunderland] with his long hair, and give us a lift - the way [Dwight Yorke] Yorkie had, a big personality in the dressing room.

“Sparky gave me permission to give him a call. So I got Robbie’s mobile number and rang him.

“It went to his voicemail, ‘Hi it’s Robbie - whazzup!’ like the Budweiser ad. I never called him back. I thought: ‘I can’t be f***ing signing that’.”

It is one of the most famous Roy Keane stories from his management career, perhaps the most famous one.

Savage himself has always poked fun at it, but he has now given his side of it, and admitted he actually wanted to sign for Sunderland so there is a tinge of sadness to it all.

“I spoke to Niall Quinn at Sunderland and the chairman at Derby – both wanted me, both agreed a fee, and I agreed to meet Roy Keane at the Marriott in Hale,” Savage told Planet Sport Bet.

“He’d phone me, we’d arrange to meet, and from there I would go to Derby and decide. I went to my agent’s house in Wigan and there was no reception. At the time, my phone message was, ‘It’s Robbie, wazzzup!’, because of the Budweiser advert on the telly.

“Roy didn’t phone and I didn’t have a notification that somebody had rung. By 2pm, 3pm, nothing, and I had to be in Derby for 5pm.

“I phoned Niall and said ‘Roy’s not rung, if the manager can’t even be bothered to ring me, I’m not coming’. I went to Derby and signed for Derby.

“The first I heard about what happened was years later in Roy’s book. He must have rung me and gone straight to voicemail, with no reception. I wish the phone had rung, as I would have said ‘Hiya, Mr Keane – yeah, I’ll be there, I’d love to speak to you’. I would have signed for Sunderland, because it was Roy Keane.

“A voicemail message is a bizarre reason not to sign me – it makes for a good story and it makes people poke fun at me, but I don’t understand it because if you read the book, Roy wanted a character – someone who could lift the changing room.

“All he had to do was speak to my previous managers and they would have said ‘Great in the dressing room, will give you everything, and a better player than people think’. Surely you don’t go off a voicemail as a manager.”

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