Clive Clarke has taken medical advice and agreed to have his contract at Sunderland terminated.

The defender came to the mutual agreement with the club after recently suffering two heart failures.

Clarke had been on loan at Leicester, when during the interval of a Carling Cup clash at Nottingham Forest, he collapsed in the dressing room and had to be rushed to hospital.

The former Republic of Ireland international has not played a competitive game since recovering from the incident, but it is still not clear whether he will now decide to retire from the game completely or just take a break before beginning a search for a new club.

Quinn and the club promised to stick by the contract, despite knowing Clarke would likely never play for us again.

Then there were all those critical comments about Keane and the fact that if his contract were terminated it would reflect badly on the club.

This is certainly an interesting development.

Yet again he will probably still have got some kind of compensation when we let him go.

He will have to get something because he still has a contract with us.

And I doubt he will have voluntarily terminated it, don't care what they say about mutual agreement.

It's what Sunderland need to start doing is getting rid of wages so we can buy better players in the summer.

"by mutual agreement"? I doubt it! Keane had the hump over the Irish Independent article in which Clarke makes less than flattering comments and as he'll never play again Keane has simply said "cheerio", end of.

If you've not read the article, here it is: http://www.independent.ie/sport/socc...d-1258747.html

Apart from the "censored" immigrants!

My point exactly.

Find the last sentence particularly interesting.

So they're going to honour the contract regardless of the surgeon's news?

"Well that's what they said. I think it sums up Niall really, that's the kind of man he is, he's an honest bloke. It's not just a business to him; he actually cares about the lads he brings into the club, and I'm obviously very grateful to him for that. I've 18 months on my deal, so if I don't get back, I'll still have income for not just six months [clubs are only required to pay a minimum if six months in cases of early retirement]. I know things change, but hopefully they won't. It'd look very bad for them now if they didn't."

Nice one chopper..had not seen that..very interesting article.

I 'take' The Sunday Times, Scotland on Sunday and the Irish Independent every Sunday and it usually takes me until Wednesday to finish them!