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Kevin Keegan

pinkeye

by pinkeye
in Football

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest firetotheworks

Guest firetotheworks

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I was just thinking about him yesterday when I was walking to work. If SBR has a statue then Keegan should like. Still the most important person in our history or at least modern history imo. He is the personification of everything good that we stand for.

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Jack Flash

Jack Flash

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It was my privilege to be part of Newcastle United's 100 year history for just 2 seasons. I count those final games of my career as a privilege. I was fortunate enough to play football at great clubs like Liverpool and Hamburg, there was the thrill and pride of 63 England caps and the honour of being voted Footballer of the Year both in this country and in Europe. But nothing gave me greater pleasure than helping Newcastle climb back into the First Division in 1984. It was a culmination of a dream I shared with the best fans I ever played for - the Geordies backed me to the hilt when I joined Newcastle from Southampton in the summer of 1982.

 

Together we saw that First Division dream come true. Now it hurts me to see them outside the top flight again. It hurts me because Newcastle United do have, beyond question, the most loyal fans in football. In fact the fans are the clubs biggest success and the basic reason why I'd always have to be optimistic about the future at St James' Park. No matter how disappointing the results or how bleak the overall picture may be, Geordie supporters have a thread of optimism running through them that is unique in football. How else could you possibly explain how the support has been so good for so long when honours have been so thin on the ground? It's more than 60 years since the First Division trophy was won and you'd have to be a tidy age to remember those fabulous FA Cup triumphs of the 50's.

 

In recent years, a great club - and Newcastle United is a great club - has spent too many frustrating years in the Second Division. They are there now and it hurts all of us who love the place. But through all the disappointments, the fans have never lost the belief that the golden era will dawn again. I believe it too.

 

There is a passion about Tyneside that only people who've lived there can possibly understand. I had been told about it before my debut against QPR at the start of the 1982/83 season. I had sampled it as a visiting player, most notably with Liverpool and most memorably on Malcolm Macdonald's home debut in 1971. Supermac's hat-trick that day and the joy and noise of a special occasion on Tyneside are still vivid memories for me. But not until I played regularly for those supporters did I come to appreciate just how special they are. The biggest compliment I paid them was choosing to retire as a Newcastle player.

 

If I could make a wish for football in general it would be to have a successful Newcastle United. What a tonic that would be for our national game. My wish for those men, women and children who go on supporting their club through thick and thin is that they get on the pitch the team that their loyalty richly deserves. If that wish was to come true, Newcastle United would be the most successful club of them all.

 

This Centenary History of United represents one man's love affair with that club. The fans will love it as much as they love everything to do with what is, in essence, the very heartbeat of a great city.

 

The Keegan appointment had taken me through the full range of emotions. Initial and genuine shock was soon followed by despair, denial and then indifference. And that was just the first 30 seconds.

 

The subsequent media hyperbole was genuinely nauseating with radio and TV mikes shoved in the faces of the usual suspects and members of the general public telling the world "it's what the Geordies wanted". I'm sure there were even folk claiming that it didn't matter if we lost every game 5-4, King Kev would win us summat....

 

Well, to be brutally honest, it wasn't what this Geordie wanted.

 

Supporting this club has turned me bitter and cynical. I don't think I was born that way, it's just been a natural consequence of years of disappointment and despair. The rest of my life has turned out pretty well so it has to be Newcastle United's fault.

 

My relationship with NUFC was in danger of turning stale after the Souness/Roeder/Allardyce years and recent fiascos threatened to have me turning to marriage guidance counsellors. We've said it many times before but indifference really is the biggest worry for football fans (and marriages).

 

But as the days wore on and the Bolton match approached something deep down in my core started to reignite. The return of Keegan had relit the pilot light and gradually the old bolier was starting to fire up again.

 

It was a plainly ridiculous appointment and once again left us open to national ridicule which seems to be our perpetual place in the football world and I thought I'd had enough of that. But as the outside media started to snipe and sneer it all started to make perfect sense.

 

We clearly have an owner who is as bonkers as we are and who seems to have got into our psyche incredibly quickly. The media gurus couldn't cope with Ashley wearing his shirt and sitting (standing) with the fans. Why not? It might not be what a Chairman should do but he's the owner.

 

People like Allardyce and Souness had no place here - they should never have been appointed. They weren't good enough to completely change the make-up of the club. Souness had found that out at Liverpool. But the appointment of Keegan - whether it works or not - was probably perfect. A crazy manager, for a crazy club with a crazy owner and crazy fans.

 

If we can't get Wenger or Mourinho to this club (both big enough and good enough to transform us) then the last thing we want is another Allardyce or Souness (e.g. Mark Hughes). What's the point in that?

 

The national phone-ins have loved it, loved it. People from all over the country, desperate to point out that it's ridiculous. Desperate to tell us we'll never win anything and that it'll all end in tears. We know! But we'll have some great memories along the way.

 

And what if it did work? What if he just went and bloody won something? Can you imagine...? As KK said himself, it's not impossible.

 

Newcastle fans have huge expectations apparently. Do we? Do we really? I expect us to win bugger all in my lifetime but I want to get that anticipation, that raw emotion of going to see a side in black and white give their all and try and entertain. And in doing that I want us to have the same chance as Spurs, Everton, Man City, Villa or even 2004 Carling Cup winners, Boro, of winning a trophy. That's not being unrealistic.

 

The top four will take a little longer but they're not invincible. Fergie can't go on forever, Liverpool seem intent on imploding, Grant may hit tough times at Stamford Bridge and even Wenger has had transitional seasons.

 

What I don't want is a team that will bore the pants off us and struggle in the short term with the promise of boring the pants off us and struggling a bit less in the long term. Why would any fan put up with that?

 

So, having gone through the full gamut of emotions in the days leading up to the Bolton match, I was right behind the appointment, striding to the game, genuinely expectant and full of hopes and dreams. Not quite as I'd been as a youngster on my way to Keegan's debut for Newcastle but not far off. The boiler was fired up and the hot water was pumping through the pipes....

 

I'm sure most of us felt like that but how many fans of the "big four" have gone to a televised match against Bolton feeling the same? None, I'd suggest. And that's what they resent. They can't cope with the love we have for our club because they simply don't understand it.

 

Football is not about winning trophies, it's about winning battles and you decide what the battles are. I'd rather be Alan Shearer than Gary Neville. Who's got the most medals? Who's the legend...?

 

"Even now, up here in Glasgow, people approach me to say they loved that Newcastle team," he told me.

 

"They became besotted with the way we played. So many folk from all over the place tell me they used to travel to St James' Park to watch us or sat glued in front of the box.

 

"You never see that sort of football now, with the possible exception of Manchester United. Football today is not my type of football.

 

"I was new to management at the beginning of the 90s and I thought all football should be played our way. I built a side to play the way I liked the game to be played.

 

"We didn't go for a team of defenders. We went out to entertain a Geordie public who crave entertainment, and that required players of flair and imagination who dared to perform in a certain way. My side and the Geordie fans were a marriage made in heaven.

 

"Teams are usually all about defence. All the coaching manuals tell you to build from the back, that if you don't concede a goal you can't lose. I preferred to believe that if you didn't score you couldn't win.

 

"We were in the entertainment business and I had a simple philosophy. I had no preconceived ideas, no fear of failure. I bought some wonderful players who were adored by the Geordies – Philippe Albert, David Ginola, Peter Beardsley, Rob Lee, Andy Cole, Les Ferdinand, Alan Shearer and, yes, Tino Asprilla. They were priceless, every one of them a wonderful asset.

 

"We almost achieved the impossible, winning the championship with a squad built on pure football. We should have won it and if we had it would not only have changed Newcastle United for good but all of football. Coaches would have been encouraged to go down our path, to rid us of a negativity that is stifling our game.

 

"Instead coaches nowadays produce clones of themselves. Cautious players with a negative attitude.

 

"It's like when you were at school. If the professor said something you accepted it at face value because he was a professor. You didn't query it. But that doesn't mean he was right every time.

 

"Imagination is your limitation. If someone tells you you can't do that you should ask `why?'

 

"I had no coaching badges. All I had done since I had finished kicking a football was play golf in Spain, but when Newcastle came for me in 1992 we sparked something special that will never be repeated.

 

"That team we put together is one of the major success stories of the last 20 years. Nothing like it will ever happen again – a newly promoted team like Sunderland this season will not threaten to win the championship because the gulf is too big now. It's all about money.

 

"I don't believe coaching badges are necessary. They stereotype people. All I ever did was go into things with great enthusiasm and belief and allow it to rub off on others."

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gbandit

gbandit

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Posted

If Keegan came back it would be like recovering from a terminal illness.

Best thing related to Newcastle in my lifetime. Love the guy to bits. When you compare him to the snake we just got rid of it makes you feel sick. Can't believe what we've been lumped with and continue to be lumped with. I barely watch us play nowadays and just about keep up with things by reading on here. This man or someone with the same values would be the only thing that could truly bring me back round. That and fat cunt leaving.

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Mick

Mick

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If Keegan came back it would be like recovering from a terminal illness.

Best thing related to Newcastle in my lifetime. Love the guy to bits. When you compare him to the snake we just got rid of it makes you feel sick. Can't believe what we've been lumped with and continue to be lumped with. I barely watch us play nowadays and just about keep up with things by reading on here. This man or someone with the same values would be the only thing that could truly bring me back round. That and fat c*** leaving.

 

In my lifetime we've probably only had 3 managers that I can look back on with pride, Joe Harvey, Keegan and Robson.  The others are not even worth talking about.

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