Kevin Keegan

[Guest]

I find the Mertesacker stuff just as depressing as the Modric story.

 

At the time I questioned why he didn’t just crack on with what he had because I still think Keegan with that team would have been comfortable mid-table but it’s clear why he did walk. It’s different to the Benítez situation where it seems more a case back then Ashley had all the people in place to shaft Keegan whereas today it’s just Ashley being a tight cunt.

[ianovthetoon]

Today's extract is up on the times website.

 

Deplorable. And somehow the likes of Dennis Wise are still allowed on TV and are given a free reign to criticise football managers who have more integrity in their little finger than he will ever have.

 

The whole thing just stinks top to bottom. I doubt anyone is naive enough to not think there's corruption at all levels but the fact that this fucker is allowed to use us a plaything for his drinking pals is shocking. Panto villain my arse he's just an out and out cunt

[TK-421]

KEVIN KEEGAN AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Kevin Keegan book extracts: ‘I was sick of them; sick of the way they were riding roughshod over me, sick of being treated like dirt’

In the second part of extracts from Kevin Keegan’s book, he describes transfer deals at Newcastle that forced him out

 

September 24 2018, 12:01am,

The Times

 

González was signed as a “favour” for two South American agents, while nobody at Newcastle had seen Xisco play before he joined

 

My last job ended in rancour and recriminations and my final game as a manager was a 3–0 defeat at Arsenal in August 2008 that will probably always be remembered for the television cameras picking out Mike Ashley in the away end, where he proceeded to down a pint in roughly the same amount of time it has taken you to read this sentence.

 

It wasn’t Mike’s beer-guzzling that upset me that day. It was the fact that Tony Jimenez, the executive who had been put in charge of Newcastle’s transfer business, had informed me we were spending £5.7 million on a Spanish player called Xisco whom nobody from the club had ever seen play. On the same day the Xisco bombshell was dropped, I had also found out a Uruguayan by the name of Ignacio González was joining us as a “favour” for two South American agents.

 

Everything reached a head, trying to prepare for one of the toughest games of the season while also having to deal with the growing knowledge that the people who were supposed to be my colleagues were taking me for a ride.

 

It was on the morning of the game that Dennis Wise rang to ask me to go online and check out González. Dennis said he had heard great things but admitted he had never actually seen him play. Further enquiries revealed that nobody, in fact, from Newcastle had ever seen this guy kick a ball.

 

Nor did it say much for the player that Dennis had texted me the wrong name, and my initial search on the internet came up with nothing. I had to go back to Dennis to find out the correct spelling. But I did as he asked.

 

I logged on again, typed in González’s name and eventually found him. I looked at his background, his age and what he had done in his career, and it didn’t need a great deal of investigation to realise this player would be out of his depth in the higher echelons of the Premier League.

 

González had gone on loan to Monaco, then a mid-table team in France, earlier in the year and flopped. He made five appearances in six months and didn’t finish 90 minutes once. We were coming to the end of August and he had played fewer than 200 minutes since Christmas. He didn’t speak a word of English and, for the life of me, I couldn’t see any reason why Newcastle might be attracted to him.

 

When I rang Dennis to explain it was out of the question, he seemed determined to change my mind. González, he said, was a “great player” and our contacts in South America meant we had the chance to get him on a season-long loan. He was adamant we should give him a go and suggested that if I clicked on YouTube I might find some footage to change my opinion.

 

YouTube? I came from an era when managers chose players on more than a few carefully edited clips on YouTube. I wanted to know a player’s character. I wanted to see how hard he worked, whether he had a good positional sense, what his concentration was like. Those were things you didn’t get from 60 seconds online.

 

I couldn’t believe what I was hearing from Dennis — an experienced football man — but I did log on to YouTube and eventually found a short video showing González’s career highlights. It looked as if he was playing in a local park in some of the games.

 

It wasn’t long before my worst suspicions were confirmed and I had a tip-off that González and Xisco had already arrived in England. One was in London, I was told, and the other was in the North East. The two deals were going through, and it didn’t make me feel any better to learn about the amount of money the club intended to throw away in the process.

 

Xisco alone was costing £5.7 million as well as a salary of £60,000 a week. He was 22, which was a better age than González, but when I checked out his background it was unremarkable stuff again. He had been at Deportivo La Coruña ‘B’, the club’s reserve set-up, and then moved up to the seniors, playing 44 times in three years. It had earned him a call-up to Spain’s under-21s, but it was still absurd to expect him to play in front of 50,000-plus people at St James’ Park.

 

González had been offered a lower salary, at £26,000 a week, but that still worked out close to £1 million over the season, and a very strange deal had been cooked up whereby he was actually signing for Valencia, a big club with their own network of agents, and within 24 hours we were getting him on loan. What was all that about? It was an unusual arrangement, to say the least, and I didn’t like the look of it one bit.

 

What I didn’t know was what Mike Ashley made of it. Did he know these deals were being arranged behind my back? Did he care? My head was spinning and I did what I was told I should never do. I took out my phone and rang the owner.

 

He answered straight away and seemed happy enough to hear from me. “Hi, King Kev.” Mike always called me King Kev, or sometimes he would refer to me as “the most honest man in football”. I think, deep down, he respected the fact I had integrity.

 

He didn’t seem to know anything about the González loan, but he said — if it would make me feel any happier — he would pay for it out of his own pocket rather than the club’s transfer budget. He didn’t seem to realise why I was so aggrieved, and he certainly didn’t look too concerned when we went into that game against Arsenal and the television cameras picked him out in the away end with a pint of lager in his hand. Twelve seconds was all it needed for the entire pint to disappear down his throat. “Is he in a rush?” the television commentator asked.

 

We lost 3–0 and when I came home, utterly demoralised, I was already thinking that was it for me. I was sick of them; sick of the way they were riding roughshod over me, sick of being treated like dirt, sick of the attitude where they clearly thought, “Oh, don’t worry about the manager, he’ll come round in the end.” I had had enough. The next day I rang Mike again. “I’m just with someone,” he said, “but I’ll get back to you.” The phone went dead and he never rang back. He did that to me a few times at Newcastle. I waited a full day and then I texted him a message. “The most honest man in football treated like garbage.”

 

When I spoke to Wise on the telephone that day, it was the first time he explained the real reasons why the González loan was being done. Dennis explained it was a favour for two agents — Paco Casal, a Uruguayan, and Marcelo Lombilla, an Argentinian — who had helped us get [Fabricio] Coloccini and [Jonás] Gutiérrez, and that if we took the hit on this one occasion and agreed to “park” González, they would look upon us favourably in the future.

 

“You don’t even have to play this guy,” Dennis said. “We want to keep the agent sweet. If you don’t want the player to train with you, you can put him in the academy. And if you don’t like him, we can get rid of him in January.” Mike had been filled in and the owner’s view was that González didn’t even have “to set foot in St James’ Park”.

 

I thought Dennis was kidding at first. He liked a laugh and I genuinely thought he might be joking. When I realised he was actually being serious, I knew immediately that I couldn’t have anything to do with a deal of that nature. I wanted to save the club from the possibility of being investigated. I wanted to protect the people around me and I wanted to look after my own reputation. I didn’t like the word “parked” and I dreaded to think of the repercussions if what the club were doing reached the newspapers. It would have been a scandal and, as far as I was concerned, it was not one I could defend.

 

Dennis called it a “favour”. A favour? As favours go, it was going to cost Newcastle a fortune. Both players were going to earn seven-figure salaries, and in Xisco’s case it was upwards of £3 million a year. Casal pocketed €250,000 from Valencia as his slice of the [González] deal. It must have been the easiest money he had ever made and, laughably, González’s loan deal had an option to buy him for £8 million at the end of the season.

 

Newcastle were not breaking any rules but it looked terrible, and left us open to all sorts of questions. The club weren’t buying these players for orthodox reasons; it was to do a favour for two agents, one of whom was getting a six-figure sum for setting it up. I felt that it was fundamentally wrong at every level and various people were getting rich off the back of it. It turned my blood cold.

 

I had never been asked to “park” a player in my life and this wasn’t a kid of 15 or 16 we were talking about. This was a man of 26. Maybe Dennis, when he was a manager, would have done it. But I wouldn’t. “I have my pride and my dignity,” I told him. “I do not want to be associated with this deal. It stinks.”

 

I knew it was over but I wanted an explanation and I asked Dennis if he would have agreed to this kind of “favour” when he was managing Leeds. I told him I could ask the same question to a hundred managers and none would have put up with it. Can you imagine, I asked, what Alex Ferguson’s reaction would have been at Manchester United if two players had been signed behind his back? Or Rafa Benítez at Liverpool? Or any manager worth his salt?

 

“Juande Ramos at Spurs would do it this way,” he said. “Well, you need to find another Juande Ramos then,” I snapped.

 

I knew there was no way back for me at Newcastle. Maybe they thought I wouldn’t dare walk away from a £3-million-a-year contract but they obviously didn’t know me very well. They had made my job untenable and, when I officially announced my resignation, via the League Managers’ Association, I wanted to make it clear to the supporters that I had been in office but not in power. After that, I started the long and difficult process of filing a claim for constructive dismissal and preparing to take Newcastle to an independent arbitration panel. Newcastle launched a counter-claim for £2 million, citing a breach of contract.

 

Every day for two weeks I would walk from my hotel in London to 70 Fleet Street, the offices of the International Dispute Resolution Centre, where the tribunal was heard. I used that walk to clear my head. It was a difficult, gruelling experience and I will never know how Dennis Wise, with absolutely zero shame, could possibly think on the day he was giving evidence that I would want to shake his hand.

 

In the end, the three-man panel — Philip Havers QC, Lord Pannick QC and Ken Merrett, Manchester United’s assistant club secretary — didn’t need long to realise how lopsided all the evidence was. Their verdict was crushing for Newcastle because what it said, in short, was that the tribunal accepted my interpretation of events rather than the arguments made by the club. I felt vindicated. It was an enormous sense of relief; finally I could get on with my life and start putting it all behind me. But I was sad, too, that it had gone that far and appalled by some of the stuff that had come out.

 

It was certainly interesting to note the awkward body language as they gave evidence, under oath, and tried to explain the González loan at a time when Newcastle were supposedly trying to change the culture whereby agents had too much influence at St James’ Park and were making extraordinary amounts of money out of the club.

 

Wise’s argument was that it was not out of the ordinary for these kinds of deals to happen in football, referring to them as “commercials”, and telling a story about his time at Leeds to illustrate his point. According to Dennis, the Leeds chairman, Ken Bates, approached him to suggest they offer a boy of 17 a professional contract. The boy wasn’t good enough to be a footballer but that, plainly, was not the most important detail as far as Leeds were concerned. The boy’s father had a successful business and a lucrative deal had been arranged for that company to sponsor Leeds — on condition they signed the boss’s son.

 

The boy was never named. Yet Wise made it clear he was happy to go along with this sham. “I said to Ken, ‘He won’t play in the first team, he won’t play in the reserves, is that OK?’ And he said, ‘OK.’ It wasn’t explained to the boy. His dad didn’t tell him. And I didn’t think it was my responsibility either.”

 

Can you believe it? We all do favours for friends sometimes, or even friends of friends, but there is a big difference between setting up someone with work experience and offering a professional contract when you know it is all a pretence. It was completely wrong. It might be the way Leeds worked back then. It wasn’t the way I wanted Newcastle to be.

 

Newcastle were ordered to pay me £2 million, plus interest, as well as costs, with the panel condemning the club for “repeatedly and intentionally misleading the press, public and the fans of Newcastle United”, noting how the loan deal for González “cost nearly £1 million in wages for a player who was not expected to play in the first team”.

 

They had dragged the club’s reputation through the gutter and, when it came to González, I still find it difficult to understand how it didn’t spark an investigation by the football authorities. Let me stress that no rules had been broken, as was made clear in the tribunal, but can you ever remember a deal that looked worse? We were talking about vast sums of money changing hands as a so-called favour. Not once did anyone from the FA seem to think, “Hang on, what the hell was all that about?”

 

Xisco made nine league appearances for Newcastle in four-and-a-half years and scored once in all that time. He was loaned to Racing Santander and Deportivo La Coruña once Newcastle had cottoned on that he wasn’t good enough. His contract was terminated in January 2013 and the Newcastle Evening Chronicle named him as one of the worst centre forwards in the club’s history.

 

Ignacio González? He made two substitute appearances for Newcastle, totalling 38 minutes, before getting injured and was never picked again. Newcastle decided not to take the £8 million option to turn his season-long loan into a permanent transfer and he went back to Valencia, who didn’t want him either. The next stage of his career was on loan at Levadiakos of Greece, where he made 14 appearances, and he eventually joined Standard Liège on a free transfer.

 

Valencia didn’t use him once and, unless I am missing something, how precisely did Newcastle benefit from that “favour” with the two South American agents? Joe Kinnear took over from me as manager. Newcastle were relegated at the end of that season and more than a hundred honest, hard-working people lost their jobs. All those lives irrevocably changed for the sake of some South American backscratching.

 

© Kevin Keegan 2018 Extracted from My Life in Football, to be published by Macmillan on October 4 at £20

[mrmojorisin75]

I'm a huge fan of Dennis Wises mate binning a deal for Luca Modric because he was too small. It's actually impressive.

[Wilson]

The modric story is disgusting like. What a mess.

[Rich]

Wise and Jimenez are a right pair of bent cunts, then, what a shocker that is.

[ScottishMagpie]

Like everyone else I'm horrified (but not surprised) at what the King has been saying but I'm also disgusted....... disgusted at myself for still going to matches after this treatment of a club legend.  Retrospection is a great thing but that should have been the end of me 'supporting' Ashley's version of NUFC.  St James should have looked like a home game at the SoS from then onwards.  I know everyone has their own 'limit' but Ashley in effect getting away with that gave him the notion he could do whatever the fuck he wanted.

[Wullie]

I'm at a complete loss to fathom how the Gonzalez deal wasn't breaking any rules. It was done as a way to get a particular agent a quarter of a million euros from Valencia, and as far as the FA are concerned that's legal? The mind fucking boggles.

[Mikky]

The timing of the book release is canny useful to the cause - gives so much publicity

[ToonArmy1892]

The timing of the book release is canny useful to the cause - gives so much publicity

[Scoot]

The timing of the book release is canny useful to the cause - gives so much publicity

 

Was thinking that myself.

[Bimpy474]

The timing of the book release is canny useful to the cause - gives so much publicity

 

You couldn't have picked a better time imo 

[Minhosa]

The timing of the book release is canny useful to the cause - gives so much publicity

 

Thought the exact same thing . Ideal.

[geordiedean]

you just know this kind of shit has been going on all through ashleys time here....Xisco,Gonzalez,Ferrerya,Doumbia theres 4 of them and im sure there will be many others like this

 

What a bunch of crooked disgusting cunts

[Wullie]

This extract is discussed in this week's Times podcast if anyone's arsed.

[wormy]

I'm at a complete loss to fathom how the Gonzalez deal wasn't breaking any rules. It was done as a way to get a particular agent a quarter of a million euros from Valencia, and as far as the FA are concerned that's legal? The mind fucking boggles.

 

I was astounded how clear he wanted to make it that rules hadn't been broken. Surely bribery is bribery?

[Guest firetotheworks]

I'd love to know why it isn't illegal, like. My assumption was always just that they'd jumped through the same loopholes that many other clubs do, including us previously with the amount of useless shite we got through Willie McKay. It's pretty obvious that Ferreyra, Saivet, Doumbia, and possibly Amalfitano fall into the Nacho González category.

[Yorkie]

This extract is discussed in this week's Times podcast if anyone's arsed.

 

Worth bothering with?

[Tubestationatmidnight]

I'd love to know why it isn't illegal, like. My assumption was always just that they'd jumped through the same loopholes that many other clubs do, including us previously with the amount of useless shite we got through Willie McKay. It's pretty obvious that Ferreyra, Saivet, Doumbia, and possibly Amalfitano fall into the Nacho González category.

 

Faye and boumsong too?

 

Reading all that it makes me wonder if Rafa even has any say at all in transfers

[Guest firetotheworks]

I'd love to know why it isn't illegal, like. My assumption was always just that they'd jumped through the same loopholes that many other clubs do, including us previously with the amount of useless shite we got through Willie McKay. It's pretty obvious that Ferreyra, Saivet, Doumbia, and possibly Amalfitano fall into the Nacho González category.

 

Faye and boumsong too?

 

Reading all that it makes me wonder if Rafa even has any say at all in transfers

 

Course he does, but the players have to be with a certain profile in order for them to be okayed, which is still really shit.

 

Boumsong might have been a favour, but it's a lot less suspicious considering SBR wanted to sign him before Souness did.

[geordiedean]

I'd love to know why it isn't illegal, like. My assumption was always just that they'd jumped through the same loopholes that many other clubs do, including us previously with the amount of useless shite we got through Willie McKay. It's pretty obvious that Ferreyra, Saivet, Doumbia, and possibly Amalfitano fall into the Nacho González category.

 

Faye and boumsong too?

 

Reading all that it makes me wonder if Rafa even has any say at all in transfers

 

I doubt it because I don't for one moment think that Joselu,Manquillo,Muto,Rondon, would have ever been his choice of signing, I know he signed some absolute shit for Liverpool but fuck me these are worse than any of that lot

[Tubestationatmidnight]

Yeah well apparently they were like 5th choice on his list but surely they can't have even been on his list at all?

They are probably just signing whatever cheap crap they can and just thrusting it on him and saying there you go keep that up.

[Guest firetotheworks]

They were his choice though. Just crucially, they weren't anywhere near his first choice*

 

 

 

 

*Rondon aside, if you believe the club statement

[Wullie]

This extract is discussed in this week's Times podcast if anyone's arsed.

 

Worth bothering with?

 

It's alright, nothing ground breaking.

 

22:15

[Guest firetotheworks]

Haven't listened to the Times Podcast for ages, is it still a bit...low key? I just listen to TFR and TTFS now.