Keane takes his inspiration from Clough as he seizes the moment

Cussed new-season optimism pulsing through him, trademark truculence brimming and the spirit of Brian Clough inspiring and illuminating his deliberation, Roy Keane returns to England's elite today. Sunderland are back in the Premiership with Keane as their leader.

It is his first season as a manager in the top flight, his first full season anywhere, and the last time Sunderland were here they departed on a record low; but still, there is no intention simply to make up the numbers. Sunderland and Keane are back to fight, to win and, revealing the scale of their ambition, to break the mould, the top four's mould.

Sunderland want to do so sooner rather than later and while such targets could sound overblown from some, when the words come from Roy Keane they carry intent.

Keane carried that graphically, of course, as the warrior midfielder at Manchester United. That character is no longer presented before us, Keane is now a self-restrained manager. But he is only 41 Sunderland games and 50 weeks into that career and while one of his key phrases over the past year has been "change is good", it is not credible that Keane's core beliefs have altered.

Now, as then, his gravitas is natural. It can still verge on menace but then that mix of authority, wildness, brilliance and fearlessness has been beguiling from the first day Clough thrust the then teenager into his Nottingham Forest debut at Anfield. Seventeen years on (Keane was 36 yesterday) and the mixture remains compelling.

Why this is so could again be seen this week. Sunderland may not be troubling favourite-backers but Keane has been aroused and rousing, his thoughts on the new season culminating in the following passage: "You cannot get away from your past and I am proud to have played for some top teams, with some top players and top managers. But I want to create something at Sunderland. I want to leave my mark at every club I have been to and, hopefully, I will try and do that.

"I never get fed up being asked about Brian Clough and, hopefully, I never will. What he did with Forest gives all of us great hope. You talk about the Readings and Wigans, but you go back to Clough and what he did at Forest and he was an absolute genius. He saw things before everyone else, like the goalkeeper situation, buying players everyone thought were over the hill, but they won European Cups with him. That gives me great hope.

"Everyone thinks it will be the big four who always grab the headlines, and lots of teams are beaten before they play the big four. I knew that as a player – you just looked at them in the tunnel and they were already beaten – beaten by your history, beaten by your jersey, beaten by your crest.

"They say that about a lot of teams. The [New York] Yankees won a lot of baseball games because of their stripes, Real Madrid, they won a game before even kicking a ball. We cannot go in there facing any team thinking we are already beaten, far from it. That is my job as a manager and that is what I enjoy. I enjoy pushing the players to the limit.

"Listen, we have to go up there, enjoy it and be up there for the challenge. I've been there as a player. I have been fortunate, but let me tell you, there is nowt to be fearful of, nothing for my players to be fearful of."

This was no rant – Keane smiles a lot at Sunderland's training ground – it was controlled passion. Crucially for the recently beleaguered club and the team, Keane has confidence rather than cockiness, self-belief rather than self-delusion.

And that will be vital because when Sunderland's players line up against their Tottenham Hotspur counterparts this lunchtime, the neutral will view the Londoners as more expensive, more experienced and, frankly, superior to Sunderland.

Obliterating any such impression from the home dressing room will be one of Keane's first and most important tasks.

He will be able to smell any inferiority complex. One reporter had the misfortune to mention "survival" to Keane on Thursday morning and Keane snapped back as if Alf Inge Haaland had entered the room: "I hope that's the last time you use that word."

It was an aggressive response, though later Keane added: "I'm not angry, you haven't seen me angry. Survival? I just don't like the word. Certain words get attached to certain clubs and I don't want that attached to Sunderland. I suppose it is up to me that it is not used. Only results will get rid of it. That's fine with me."

So far, of course, results have been more than fine and, to date, 2007 has been Keane's year. Sunderland were 12th in the Championship as it dawned. They had just lost 1-0 at home to Preston North End, for whom David Nugent scored. There were 30, 000 inside the Stadium of Light; Birmingham were 16 points ahead and few on Wearside were thinking of Nyron Nosworthy marking Dimitar Berbatov.

But 17 of Sunderland's next 20 games were won. When Burnley were overcome at the Stadium of Light at the end of April, Sunderland were second and the crowd was 45,000. Eight days later Luton were demolished 5-0 at Kenilworth Road and Sunderland leapfrogged Birmingham to win the Championship title.

The turnover in personnel has been perpetual and since promotion Keane, with muscular financial backing, has accelerated. It has not been straightforward, however. Nugent, for one, failed to move to Sunderland and it is doubtful whether, for example, Spurs would have signed Russell Anderson from Aberdeen, Dickson Etuhu from Norwich or paid Cardiff City £5m for Michael Chopra.

But Keane has. And on Thursday he added Hearts' Craig Gordon, a 6ft 4in Scottish goalkeeper, for £9m. In doing so Sunderland broke the British transfer record for a keeper. Which brought us back to Clough and Forest and the signing of Peter Shilton. That broke the British transfer record for a goalkeeper in 1977 and Forest, freshly promoted, promptly became champions of England.

Keane did not balk at the comparison. "You look back at people like Peter Shilton. Brian Clough spoke about that many a time, about how many points he reckoned Shilton was worth to him every season. But Clough was ahead of everyone at that stage. That would have been planted in my head during the summer. I was watching ESPN. They were showing the old games and Forest were on when Shilton played and they spoke about it. I was thinking, 'Yeah'."

So many others will be thinking the same about Keane. In the past four years the Premiership has lost David Beckham, Patrick Vieira, Alan Shearer, Ruud van Nistelrooy and Thierry Henry. Keane went, too, but now he is back, in a sharp suit, ready for a top-flight future he called "cut-throat".

Sunderland's changing face

* Starting line-up from Keane's first game, 9/9/06, Derby (a), W 2-1

(4-4-2):

Ben Alnwick;

Rory Delap

Kenny Cunningham

Stanislav Varga

Robbie Elliot;

Liam Miller

Graham Kavanagh

Dean Whitehead

Ross Wallace;

David Connolly (S Elliot)

Chris Brown

Substitutes: Ward, Hysen, Leadbitter, Collins

* Probable line-up for today's Premier League home game with

Tottenham Hotspur:

(4-4-2)

Craig Gordon;

Greg Halford

Paul McShane

Nyron Nosworthy

Ross Wallace;

Carlos Edwards

Dwight Yorke

Dickson Etuhu

Kieran Richardson;

Michael Chopra

Daryl Murphy

Let me do my job...The world according to Roy Keane

* "Maybe we all got lucky last season, so it's a big test: can we maintain what we did last season? It's a massive challenge for the players, for myself coming up against the top managers, but listen, that's what I am in the game for."

* "The fans, everyone, should just chill out and relax. Let me do my job, that is what I am paid very well to do."

* "A disgrace, a PR disaster." On the Football League's decision not to present Championship trophy at Luton on 6 May.

* "God knows what would have happened if Niall hadn't come into things: maybe Sunderland would have been slugging it out with Leeds instead of preparing for the Premiership."

* "I spoke to Mick [McCarthy] a few weeks ago and we put everything to bed. It's about the players tomorrow, it's Sunderland versus Wolves and everyone should be talking about that."

* "What's holding back Liam Miller is the fact that he's from Cork – without a doubt. People think I'm crazy for saying that, but I'm not. They don't know the FAI as well as I do."

* "Real team-mates have a go at each other."

* "It's been good, even putting on the gear, playing in a challenge game, getting your tracksuit out. Speaking to the groundsman, to Niall, to everyone, you get a nice warm feeling. There has been a lot of disappointment here."

* "I'm 35 years of age, too young to be wise."

* "I haven't helped myself over the years with the image. I think that was part of my scene at United and maybe with Ireland, that I was football mad and – psycho's probably too strong a word. But football means a hell of a lot to me."