Imagine you are a professional footballer and you have decided to confess to your manager that you have a gambling problem.

You approach the door to their office, and to make the ordeal that bit harder, on the other side sits Roy Keane.

For many people who see the former Manchester United midfielder turned fierce TV pundit as a difficult character to approach, it may have been enough to make them think twice.

Yet for former Sunderland striker Michael Chopra, who decided to push the door and walk in, Keane could not have been more understanding and helped him turn his life around.

Chopra was 23 at the time, and over cups of green tea the pair would forge a strong bond which started when Keane ensured Chopra got professional help immediately.

"I didn't know what to expect because I'd not long been at Sunderland - and it’s Roy Keane," says Chopra, who left Cardiff in the summer of 2007 to join the Black Cats for £5m.

"So I was a bit frightened when I first went in, but he took to me straight away. He opened up about some things he'd done wrong and he didn't have to do that.

"Whenever I mention Roy Keane, people often say, 'wow, are you being serious?' But I had a great relationship with him. It wasn't, I’m a player and he's my manager, it was more of a friendship.

"We would go in his office after training and drink green tea and speak about life, speak about everything. He knew about my problems and he tried to make me happy in training, try to have a laugh and giggle with me.

"I really took to him and if anyone has a bad word to say about him, I totally disagree, because I've seen a different side to Roy.

"When you saw him on a football pitch, he was captain of Manchester United, he wants the best for his football club, and rightly so. But off the pitch, he was a different person, an unbelievable guy."
'Roy checked me into Nightingale Hospital'

Chopra, now 36, admits that he lost thousands of pounds at a time to gambling, and the addiction was at its worst when he returned to Cardiff in 2009.

But he is now in recovery and wants to help other addicts over the Christmas period, which "can be very challenging when financial worries are top of their minds", according to GamCare CEO Anna Hemmings.

The charity for problem gamblers has teamed up with others to launch a TalkBanStop

campaign which offers free services, including a national helpline, to help addicts begin their recovery journey.

In Chopra's case, Keane was the person who paved that road to redemption.

"Roy spoke to Sporting Chance and said to me, 'I'm going to get you the help you need as soon as possible. You’ve got to go and do it’,” says Chopra, who also had spells at Newcastle United, Ipswich Town and Blackpool before moving to play in India with the Kerala Blasters in 2014.

"It was brilliant. I couldn't get into Sporting Chance because it was fully booked, but he helped get me into the Nightingale Hospital in London instead.

"That was all down to Roy. He was the one that got me help first.

"You think you can solve all the problems yourself and you can't. You have to open up to people, you have to let people know about it, and you have to you have to try and get help.

"The most important thing is you've got to speak to people."