One early dissident from the FA’s strict “Yo, Nuff Respec” campaign – in which Premier League managers are permitted to punch referees in the throat and call them names only if they feel they have made an incorrect decision during a game – is, of course, Roy Keane.

The manager of Sunderland has a strange and elliptical relationship with “respect”; he seems to like it when it is applied by other people to himself – indeed, he is volubly demanding of it. But he has not, throughout his fine career, shown an enormous amount of it to other people. On occasions, when respect has been demanded of him, he has responded with the anatomically intriguing invitation: “Up your bollocks.”

There were photographs of him last weekend addressing the referee Martin Atkinson in an up-your-bollocks-type manner; Keano felt that two of Chelsea’s five goals were of questionable legality. Okay, he may have had a point. That would have made the final score 3-0, unless Roy, in his dudgeon, thought that Sunderland at 1-0 down would have swept all before them and gone on to win 5-1. Now he is to be hauled over the coals for his up your bollocks stuff, for his lack of respect towards Atkinson. Keane’s response to this forthcoming upbraiding has been, semantically at least, also “up your bollocks”: he says the respect campaign is a fatuous PR exercise (yep, sure) and is mystified that the authorities believe he has a charge to answer.

I like Keane; he speaks a lot of sense about the game and seems, instinctively, to loathe what top-level football has become. He has also done a remarkable job at Sunderland, although the team’s gentle downward trajectory must worry him, especially if it leads to Sunderland being replaced in the Premier League next season by Mick McCarthy’s Wolverhampton Wanderers. If that happens, you might allow the honest and decent McCarthy a wryly muttered, valedictory “up your bollocks” in the direction of his old sparring partner. McCarthy is rather too gracious a man to do so, I reckon.

Keane has respect for very few people, it seems. He has been at various points scathing about the FA, the Premier League, managers, players, referees, supporters and catering staff. He has yet to vent his spleen on programme sellers, though one assumes that will not be long in the offing. He is that most difficult of creatures, the anti-authority authoritarian, one part Bakunin, one part Mussolini. It is a difficult combination to pull off, frankly. Keano's latest broadside is at those serried ranks of pundits, former professional footballers of moderate or decent reputation, who illuminate our Saturday evenings or Sunday afternoons with their acute take on every game. The ones who sit on a sofa saying stuff. Sitting on a sofa is, in Roy’s mind, almost as bad as eating a prawn sandwich. If you were to sit on a sofa eating a prawn sandwich Keane would probably come over and hit you. This is the Mussolini bit of Roy Keane, the bit that will countenance no opinions other than those of himself and a certain gilded few who matter, who have earned his respect. Anyway, here’s what he said after watching a few people on Sky talking about the Arsenal manager, Arsène Wenger: “I’d rather go to the dentist. You’re sitting there with Richard Keys and they’re trying to sell something that’s not there. They are brainwashing people. There was a debate about Arsène Wenger on Sky. How crazy is that? We're giving these people air-time! I wouldn’t listen to these people in a pub.”

Hmm, well, you wonder what Roy would listen to in a pub, other than his own howling at the moon. And his stoic defence of Mr Wenger will be interesting to revisit when Sunderland have tried very hard to kick Arsenal off the pitch on the next occasion the two sides meet and Wenger has made his usual complaint. “Up your bollocks,” I suspect it will be then. But is he right, Keano, about the level of punditry that we all endure? You can understand why some managers are irked by the sofa boys; it is a comfortable, well-remunerated, risk-free platform from which to spew forth half-baked judgments on the endeavours of men whose employment is not merely temporary and fraught, but also bound to end, sooner or later, in failure.

If you were Martin Keown, would you forsake the easeful slumber of the television studio to join Tony Adams in his mad, hectic dash towards relegation at Pompey? With the prospect of unemployment but months or even weeks away? Or Alan Shearer, who seems to be offered stewardship of the Tyneside Institution for the Insane and Deeply Troubled on an almost weekly basis but prefers instead to improve his punditry (and it is improving) in comfort every Saturday night. The sofa is preferable to management these days. But who is good at it and who is not? I reckon that the two best pundits in the business are both owned by the BBC – first, Alan Hansen, who is as eloquent and astute now as he was when he was playing the game, and secondly Mark Lawrenson, who adds to a fine understanding of the game a dry wit and lugubriousness that finds accord with the supporters of even the most successful teams.

There is no occasion so joyous that Lawrenson will not be able to undermine it with a baleful, miserable observation. They should have had him commenting on Obama’s victory. Lee Dixon is irritating, although nowhere near as irritating as the fabulously-pleased-with-himself Graeme Le Saux, presumably employed because a TV producer once read that he was a Guardian reader and therefore “intelligent”. It figures, given that Le Saux is almost always wrong. Andy Townsend is okay, Mark Bright a lot less so – but both are better than David Pleat, who has never said anything in his entire life which is remotely interesting or revelatory. You will have your favourites, I suppose – but you’re all wrong. Up your bollocks.

Talking rot?

RICHARD KEYS
‘I think I’ve done it once for Sky but never again. I’d rather go to the dentist. You’re sitting with people like Richard Keys and they’re trying to sell something that’s not there.’ Roy Keane’s take on acting as a pundit for the satellite broadcaster was hardly an endorsement of the station’s anchorman, who has been in his position since Sky began its live coverage of the Premiership in 1992. Keys was a breakfast TV presenter before that.

SAM ALLARDYCE
Sacked by Newcastle United in January, ‘Big Sam’ was barely seen until the start of this season when he re-emerged as a pundit for Sky Sports. The former Bolton boss clearly views the arrangement as his best opportunity not only to pick up a bit of spare cash but to keep himself in the managerial shop window. So far, however, his stints as a pundit on live matches and in the studio with Jeff Stelling and the gang for Soccer Saturday have not prompted any interest.

ALAN SHEARER
Began commentating with Sky on England matches when he was still a Newcastle player and has since joined Lineker and Hansen on the Match of the Day sofa. The former striker can usually be relied upon to go easy on the current crop of England stars and to confirm his interest ‘one day’ in the manager’s job at Newcastle. Whether this one day will ever come remains to be seen. In the meantime, he is content to give bland verdicts for the Beeb, and, the way Newcastle have gone in the last year, who can blame him?