Keane Promised Big Budget to Strengthen Sunderland

Roy Keane appears to have had his demand for a lavish summer transfer kitty granted by Sunderland's Irish backers. Charlie Chawke, a key member of the Drumaville consortium which owns the club, yesterday pledged to raise the cash required to finance Keane's proposed spending.

"If £50m is what Roy needs then that's it," said Chawke. "He can't do it without the money and, some way or other, he must get it."

Keane spent £44m during last summer and this January's transfer window, with some of that investment apparently wasted on several distinctly disappointing buys yet Chawke and his Drumaville colleagues remain undeterred.

Sunderland's manager presented his list of transfer targets and players he would like to part with to Niall Quinn, the club's chairman, and Peter Walker, the chief executive on Monday. Ideally, Keane would hope to recruit two high-profile players on what would be club-record wages of around £80,000 a week. He regards the enticement of a high salary as perhaps the only realistic way of attracting top players to Wearside.

But Quinn will expect Keane to trim his playing staff and one of the names whose future appears uncertain is Kieran Richardson, a £5.5m buy from Manchester United last summer.

Jonny Evans, the Northern Ireland center-half who spent the second half of the season on loan from United at the Stadium of Light has now returned to Old Trafford, but Keane hopes to make him a Sunderland player by August.