Roy Keane has responded to calls for him to take on the Manchester United job after Michael Carrick is sacked.

The Red Devils fans were granted brief respite from their miserable existence on Tuesday as Matheus Cunha inspired a dramatic comeback against Roma to secure their first victory in nearly two months.

Michael Carrick is widely expected to lose his job having been handed the permanent reins in the summer and a new manager – likely Eddie Howe or Julian Nagelsmann – will be tasked with getting a tune out of a group of players who have consistently sullied the good name of Manchester United.

Keane won seven Premier League titles, four FA Cups and the Champions League in a 12-year spell at United, largely as captain, and has never returned in an official capacity since an acrimonious exit in November 2005.

Keane managed Sunderland and Ipswich but also worked as Martin O’Neill assistant at Ireland and Nottingham Forest and under Paul Lambert at Aston Villa.

There have been suggestions in some quarters that the Red Devils hero should be handed the top job at Old Trafford. Djibril Cisse, who played under Keane at Sunderland, feels he’d be a good fit.

He said: “Roy Keane has the weight of experience and history. He is a strong personality, and he’s an icon of the club.

“He wore the armband for so many years during United’s glory days, so bringing him back would be a really good thing.

“I really enjoyed working with him because he didn’t judge me on what he’d heard or what people might say about my character. He trusted me, it worked very well, and I was very disappointed when he left. He’s a coach I loved working with and whom I respect enormously.

“We’re quite similar. We’re honest, we say things straight, and once it’s said, we move on. We’re all in. When I do something, I do it properly. When I say something, I mean it. He’s like that too, and I really, really enjoyed my time with him.”

But Keane says that while he believes he “could have been a really good manager” that ship has now sailed.

“These last few years [of prioritising TV punditry over coaching] … there’s no going back now,” Keane said on The Overlap. “There’s definitely part of me over the last few years that thinks I should still be a manager somewhere. I still feel I could have been a really good manager.

“When you’re in that managerial role, you’re thinking two or three bad results and you could be out the door… that’s a tough rollercoaster. I don’t miss being on that rollercoaster, I just have this feeling that I could have been a really good manager.”