And so the madness of Roy Keane takes another twist, and the rumor mills go into overdrive at a time when every other industry in Ireland is contracting.

On Thursday of last week the most talked about man in Irish sport made the surprise if not shocking decision to stand down as manager of Sunderland football club.

On Saturday morning a previously unheralded Scandinavian businessman by the name of Pers Magnus Andersson claimed in The Guardian newspaper that Keane was of "unsuitable mind" to be a manager.

By Saturday afternoon the club's new Irish American owner Ellis Short had distanced himself from the comments of Andersson - the chairman of his investment company!

On Sunday, the great Roddy Collins came up with a theory surrounding Keane's Sunderland exit that is so bizarre it could be true, but we'll come back to that one later on.

On Monday, Niall Quinn confirmed that the club has been inundated with applications for the job but want a marquee name who can get them as many front and back pages as Keane did in his 28 months in charge. I wish them well.

On Tuesday, the newspapers carried a story which confirmed that Short and Sunderland had actually apologized to Keane for Andersson's off the wall remarks, while Keane confirmed that he will return to management sometime in the future.

So when Cork City parted company with their affable manager Alan Matthews later that day the obvious connection was made - Roy will return as manager at Turner's Cross!

Anything, of course, is possible in this tale, just as it always has been where Keane is concerned.

And, as always, the country is divided down the middle on the latest Keane "walkout" if you like, even though Mick McCarthy will tell you that he unceremoniously kicked Keane out of Saipan all those years ago.

That's irrelevant now. What's relevant here is that Keane is no longer the Sunderland manager after losing six of the last seven games of his first stint in management.

The reasons for his departure have been over-analyzed if anything in recent days. Keane's poor record in the transfer market and his decision to throw money at the likes of Chimbonda, Diouf and Cisse have been criticized.

His failure to appoint a Godfather figure as his number two, surrounding himself with apparent yes men, has been chronicled as another weakness.

A pretty limited relationship with his old enemy and club chairman Quinn has also been revealed, as has a rather brittle temperament within the Sunderland dressingroom.

And there's the fact, outlined in this very column last week, that the new American owners at Sunderland did not view Keane in quite the same revered tones as the Irishmen they bought control of the club from.

All the above have contributed to another fascinating Keano story in recent days, but surprising as it will sound to some I happen to feel for the guy right now.

No matter where you stand in relation to his character, he has left Sunderland better placed than he found them when they were bottom of the Championship and heading for nowhere other than League One.

Because the Premier League is so poor outside of the top four or five teams there is every chance that a couple of wins will get them back into the middle of the table, and nothing to suggest that Keane couldn't have masterminded those wins if he had decided to stay around.

Not for the first time and not for the last time, however, Roy Keane has done what is right for Roy Keane, and good luck to him. He alone knows why he quit, and he alone will have to live with the decision, just like he has to live with so many contentious decisions in his past.

Which brings me back rather nicely to the Roddy Collins theory that Keane's reign as Sunderland manager and the subsequent end to it is all one great big revenge for Saipan on Mother Theresa, a/k/a Niall Quinn.

Roddy's claim is simple - Roy has just wasted over €100 million on behalf of Quinn and the Drumaville Consortium on a bunch of useless players who are on the verge of dragging Sunderland back into the Championship and ruining the club.

That, reckons Roddy, is the ultimate revenge for Saipan!

It is bizarre and unbelievable - until you realize that this is a Roy Keane story we are talking about. Yet again.

When Roy's around anything is possible as we all know well!