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Ashley needs to make Keegan our MD.

 

The daft thing is, despite all the bad blood I still think Keegan would come back if Ashley apologised and requested him to return. It's not going to happen though, the truth is Keegan and Ashley are planets apart when it comes to transfer policy.

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Keegan as director of football IF he is given certain assurances.

 

We know that he's got principles therefore it's highly unlikely but if Ashley genuinely wants to get it right he couldn't go far wrong by appointing someone who knows the club

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Ashley needs to make Keegan our MD.

 

The daft thing is, despite all the bad blood I still think Keegan would come back if Ashley apologised and requested him to return. It's not going to happen though, the truth is Keegan and Ashley are planets apart when it comes to transfer policy.

 

what on earth leads you to that conclusion?

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Ashley needs to make Keegan our MD.

 

The daft thing is, despite all the bad blood I still think Keegan would come back if Ashley apologised and requested him to return. It's not going to happen though, the truth is Keegan and Ashley are planets apart when it comes to transfer policy.

 

what on earth leads you to that conclusion?

 

It was a hypothetical scenario where Ashley would change how he operates. Obviously that's not going to happen so it's all pie in the sky.

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  • 2 weeks later...

http://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/football/football-news/newcastle-uniteds-most-memorable-managers-9410727

 

Keegan Kevin Keegan was an outrageous gamble that spectacularly hit the button.

 

He may have been England skipper with a frizzy perm who finished his distinguished playing career by leading Newcastle to promotion but Keegan had never managed a fish and chip shop never mind a top football club.

 

He had lived out of the country in Marbella since retirement many years before whiling his days away playing golf and lazing in the sun.

 

KK had lost touch with the current football scene back home. His contacts were severely limited, his knowledge and capability to mould a bunch of players into a fighting force unknown.

 

Yet United, in the depths of despair, turned not to the safest of targets but a little fella with a trigger temperament and a controversial as well as charismatic personality.

 

Sure, Keegan’s impact would be immediate given the way he had wowed Geordies during his two years as a player but once the honeymoon was over then what?

 

I’ll tell you what – the birth of the Entertainers and a glory charge from the cusp of the old Third Division to Premier League runners-up. The rise was so swift, so sudden, as to give you a nose bleed.

 

However it was a great coming together of minds and spirit. Sir John Hall, backed by go-getters like his son Douglas and Freddie Fletcher, fitted perfectly with Keegan’s flamboyance which fitted like a glove with the dreams of success starved Geordies.

 

It was the right time, right place, and right people.

 

Keegan was like riding a bucking bronco – exciting, dangerous, unpredictable, glorious, heart stopping.

 

He was a handful all right, but it was worth taking the risk as long as you were prepared for the occasional fall as well as growing success.

 

Keegan may have been the greatest self-promoter I have ever met, the most willing to integrate with the fans, and a tub-thumper par excellence but he could also spit out the dummy.

 

I saw it at firsthand on many occasions. Terry McDermott spent more time on the motorway bringing back a departing Kevin than he did putting out the cones on the training pitch!

 

Like so many others I had my ups and downs with a temperamental centre stage star. I was close enough to him to regularly share a stage during a series of talk-ins yet when a player he tried to stop the sales of a book I’d written about him which he had originally given permission for me to do.

 

I always thought he worried over my ability to gain the ear of Sir John having worked with Hall’s Magpie Group for two years. However when he did hold court every word was like a drop of water on a parched tongue and in any case results were so spectacular I could forgive him anything.

 

The strength of Keegan was that he was in complete control of player purchases which is why when he fleetingly returned under Mike Ashley and it wasn’t a coming together of like minds he was off quicker than Usain Bolt chasing a rabbit. Having been told who to sign by Dennis Wise a shocked KK ran all the way to see a solicitor and see Ashley in a Premier League court.

 

No one of course could argue with the players Keegan brought in during the early nineties...Peter Beardsley, David Ginola, Andy Cole, Les Ferdinand, Philippe Albert, Rob Lee, Tino Asprilla and Alan Shearer were entertainers as well as winners, though it must be said that Hall willingly put up the money to purchase them. United’s record transfer fee was smashed time and again until a world record £15m was paid to bring Shearer home.

 

The success, you see, not only required a leader with the vision of Keegan but an owner who would fully back him.

 

Again as with Joe Harvey more than two decades before this United manager was never a coach. If it had been up to him he would have played five-a-side all day long.

 

What KK cleverly did, though, was open United’s training ground at Durham to the punters with Derek Fazackerly and others organising the sessions.

 

More than 3,000 would turn up just to watch Newcastle train.

 

That bond with the fans is so, so different to what we have today. The punters believed and trusted him. He was able to sell United’s record goalscorer Andy Cole to Manchester United and stand on the steps of St James’ Park asking worried Toon followers to believe in him. Can you imagine Alan Pardew doing that? Or Ashley?

 

Trust him they did and they were rewarded by the signings of Ferdinand and Shearer!

 

FAMOUS QUOTES

“It’s not like it said in the brochure” – when first walking out on managing United.

 

“I’d love it, love it” – losing control on telly when asked about beating Fergie to the title as Newcastle sacrificed a 12 point lead.

 

“What’s his job? He’s my goffer” – surprising everyone by bringing a non coach Terry McDermott onto his backroom staff.

 

 

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  • 1 month later...
Guest neesy111

Did I hear that segment correctly, were there plans to do the Gallowgate End? Or was that incorrectly said on that video.

 

That was when the gallowgate was standing.

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Did I hear that segment correctly, were there plans to do the Gallowgate End? Or was that incorrectly said on that video.

 

Aye, but thats cos this is what SJP looked like in the early 90s

 

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v298/supergeordie/sjp/early90s.jpg

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Guest Howaythetoon

 

6 minutes in. Just such belief

 

Thanks for sharing, never saw that.

 

The expectations from fans man... I would cringe if it was today, but back then, despite being a newly promoted side, that's what KK made you think and want and actually believe. I know I did.

 

Its staggering what he did in that first season. He sold his two best players and two most prolific scorers and had lost Beardsley of course. To finish 3d was immense and a bigger achievement than finishing 2nd. In fact that 3rd place finish is my fave season of all time.

 

That stadium being rebuilt behind him, that was down to his leadership and ambition. Fans went from dreading going to the match because it often resulted in a defeat to believing we could win the league, all within the space of 12 months. That was the power of KK. I fucking love the bloke me.

 

He puts most of those connected with NUFC these days to shame and many in the game itself.

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Would anyone here be open to a brand new towering stadium? Just curious looking at the new stadium plans for many teams and wondering what people want. Or maybe it's a full scale renovation of the current ground?

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I'd be appalled to move out of St James. Significant renovations might be good but would have to be looked at seriously, at the moment the most likely one would be sports direct carved into letters 500ft high towering over all of newcastle.

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Guest Howaythetoon

I'd rather be stuck with the capacity we have then move from SJP, its the only decent thing about us these days, outside the absolute bastardisation of it with those SD ads.

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yeah. IMO the thing that would best improve the stadium (and many in the league to be fair) but will probably never happen due to i guess understandable touchiness, is safe standing. The atmosphere in St James with another 10k in there would be great (i have no actual idea how much extra capacity safe standing would add mind). Visually I think it's fine tbh.

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He made me dread going to the match. I was about 9 and used to sit on the Gallowgate barriers. I remember complaining about how many times I got pushed off because of the number of goals we were scoring all of a sudden.

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He made me dread going to the match. I was about 9 and used to sit on the Gallowgate barriers. I remember complaining about how many times I got pushed off because of the number of goals we were scoring all of a sudden.

 

Of all the complaints they had to listen to...

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He made me dread going to the match. I was about 9 and used to sit on the Gallowgate barriers. I remember complaining about how many times I got pushed off because of the number of goals we were scoring all of a sudden.

 

Of all the complaints they had to listen to...

 

The season we've just had would have been very comfortable

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6 minutes in. Just such belief

 

Nice one, never seen that. In addition to the Keegan quotes (you could just listen to him all day, couldn't you?), it was refreshing to hear a couple of pundits actually considering a promoted team could challenge for the title. Alright, Hansen says "I don't think they'll get as far as the title" - but the fact it's even being mentioned is something we'll never hear again. It's a pity. 

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