Keane has extra time to make appeal

Roy Keane has been given until 5pm on Friday to launch an appeal against his five-match ban and £150,000 fine. It had been thought the Manchester United captain had been given a fortnight from the date of his original hearing on 15 October to respond to the double penalty after the Football Association found him guilty of two misconduct charges.

At his pre-Champions' League press conference yesterday, United's manager, Sir Alex Ferguson, indicated that the deadline had been extended but at the time, FA officials refused to confirm it. However, because the letter detailing the punishment was not issued until 18 October, Keane has 14 days from that date, effectively the end of normal office hours on Friday.

It is still not known whether the former Republic of Ireland captain will appeal against the penalty. He returned from a short break yesterday to resume his recovery from a hip operation and is due to start his ban on 4 November, with a domestic return pencilled in for the 7 December encounter with Arsenal at Old Trafford.

Ferguson still hopes to find a game for his captain before then with the Champions' League tussle with Bayer Leverkusen on 13 November an option, given Keane's clearance to play in Europe. At his hearing, Keane was found guilty of making an "improperly motivated tackle" on Alf Inge Haaland in last year's Old Trafford Manchester derby and also profiting from the incident following comments in his autobiography.

In his book, Keane indicated that he had deliberately sought to injure Haaland during the game as retribution for the Norwegian accusing him of feigning injury when he had in fact ruptured cruciate knee ligaments during Manchester United's meeting with Leeds four years previously.

During the original hearing, it is believed that Keane claimed he had never said the actual words used in the book and they had been incorrectly paraphrased by his ghostwriter Eamon Dunphy, who was called as a witness to speak on behalf of the former Nottingham Forest player.

Haaland has not completed a full match since the incident, although his troubles centre around an injury to his other knee, which the City man feels were exacerbated by Keane's challenge.

At the time of the original hearing, City's chairman, David Bernstein, said he was "monitoring the situation" and legal investigations were ongoing.