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 Monday
14 November 2005 By Howaythetoon  To keep me from stiffening up with rigamortis during the boring international breaks I like to indulge in a favourite past-time of mine. I get out my burgeoning collection of Newcastle tapes and DVDs and take a trip doon memory lane. Back to the Kevin Keegan days, in particular. To paraphrase the great man, I just love it! I can't get enough of Cole's record-breaking 40th goal hitting the back of the Villa net... Albert's chip over Peter Schmeichel and THAT 5-0 scoreline against the team we all love to hate... The flashing camera bulbs that jump out of Blundell Park like bolts of lighting as promotion to the Premiership is clinched... The look on fans' faces in the crowd that fateful day at St. James' Park when David Kelly's goal saved us. Fans not knowing whether to scream or cry, frozen momentarily as the brain struggled to comprehend what had just happend... The sight of Keegan slumped behind the Anfield advertising hoardings as the camera visibly shakes and the echo of Martin Tyler's haunting "COLLYMORE!!!!!!!!" plays out in the background... So many memories... good and bad, but mostly And it leaves me colder than the North Sea when I compare the class of 2005 to the halcyon days as they will forever be known as. We were some club back then, weren't we? If the Black & White brethren were today asked to paint a picture of the Newcastle they wanted to see and be a part of, Keegan's United would be that club for many, without a doubt. With some silverware thrown in this time... Great football played in the right spirit with a team of exquisite talent, a manager and Boardroom steadfast in their joint ambitions and a fantastic bowl shaped St. James' Park that sucked in the atmosphere and then exhaled it back out with all the class and charm of Marlon Brando puffing on one of Cuba's finest between film shoots. The Toon were everything we'd ever dreamt about and everything we could ever hope for... and then sum! Both on and off the park. It was as if Keegan and Sir John Hall crept into our imaginations, pick-pocketed our visions for our club and then applied them to the good name Newcastle United. All in our honour. They gave us a club that was ours, built in our image. One we could identify with and be proud of. But most important of all, one we could believe in. And today, just over a decade on? NUFC today are the antithesis of the club KK and Sir John had built from the carcass like remains left over from the Gordon McKeag era. If Keegan was God, then Souness is the Devil. If Freddy Shepherd is an embarrassment to the North East, then Sir John was a Champion of it. The 'two' club's, while still draped in Black & White, still playing at St. James' Park, still wearing the same badge and still looking for that elusive trophy, couldn't be any more different. When I relive those glory days I'm watching a different club, totally unrecognisable to the one we follow today in every possible way. Nothing ever lasts forever of course, we all knew Keegan's 10 year-contract wouldn't reach it's expiry date and that at some stage the phenomenal progress the club were making, from near extinction to almost Champions of England in the space of 4 very short years, with a 150% improvement in turnover, would recede somewhat. But to the extent it has? If KK's era was a full head of hair with strong roots, we're fucking bald now with the roots nothing but follicles! The manner in which we have went backwards since those days, failing to build on the monumental building blocks put in place, is for me, no different to the McKeag administration that sold off our homegrown Geordie gems, allowed the Old Gallowgate to fester in the piss it stunk of and presided over years of decay and ruin that almost saw the club go out of existence. We have been unlucky in many ways over the years, for sure as one ex Toon manager would say. Entrusting millions of pounds to a succession of big name highly paid coaches who didn't quite get full value for money in the transfer market, not often enough anyway. And tangible success in the form of two Cup Finals were just 90 minutes from within our outstretched grasp, of course. While many a false down has risen over the horizon only for clouds of doom to darken our skies. But that's football; it's a fickle sport where you win some, and you lose some. I can accept that. But I cannot accept what's happened to my beloved club in between the Keegan years and the Souness year where we are at now. It's been one disaster after another on and off the park. With 2 years of Sir Bobby Robson magic the only period that came close to being anywhere near acceptable (a false dawn). As a club the only things that link now to then are the big money signings that put bums on seats and the often ludicrous sound bites that reverberate around the corridors of St. James's. Unlike today though, back then big name players were actually bought to win Championships and not to appease irate fans wondering where the next goal is going to come from after a disastrous goalless and winless start to the campaign, this on the back of our worst ever Premiership finish. Where as previous sound bites that emanated from the SJP press department were mission statements, backed up with solid action and sheer conviction, not the slow news day copy for the sycophants at Thompson House to peddle to their sheep like readership brought up on a staple of "Ronaldo/Rivaldo/Ronaldinho/Rooney" headlines. From a club aiming to become the biggest in world football (KK and Sir John Hall's words not mine) to a club waiting on a 48 year-old goalscoring record being broken to get their jollies, just where did it all go wrong for Newcastle United? Many of you reading this will point to the day Keegan walked out, while some will say the day Alan Shearer went down like a sack of spuds at Goodison Park in the Summer of 1997 after twisting his ankle. For me though, it started the day we actually signed the No.9! Not Shearer himself the actual player, please understand. But the actual signing. The ramifications of it and the proceeding events that would follow. On paper, and to Keegan and United fans, the day we brought the Geordie centre-forward hyem issued a statement of intent. Here we had signed a player regarded as the best all-round striker in world football who would give us 25 goals a season for the best part of a decade. A player to score the goals to fire us to glory, season in - season out. Or so one would imagine... In the boardroom however, the world-record breaking signing that was Shearer, wasn't seen as the man to win trophies, but something different altogether - the finishing touches to a business plan that would see the club through an IPO (Initial Public Offering). From Limited to Public company and with it untold riches for the major shareholders. By 1996 the Premiership's popularity had soared with Newcastle playing our fullest part in the rapid revival of the British game. The club, and indeed most other clubs, relied heavily on the money from Sky Television which accounted for upwards of 70% of the turnover for some, and for a successful floatation United had to show the City that this money wasn't going to suddenly dry up any time soon. Restated: Suffer relegation from the lucrative Premiership from which the club relied on and still do, for it's main source of income. In effect, Shearer being the striker he was, capable of scoring 25 goals a season, was basically a solid 22-carrot gold guarantee that the club would remain a Premiership "force" for the best part of a decade. They had "bought off" relegation. Ensuring with it a rich source of revenue year in year out and thus making the club's business plan viable in the eyes of investors and potential shareholders. £15 million was peanuts compared to what the club would earn from TV money alone and the knock-on-effect of that during the length of Shearer's contract. Corporate sponsors and advertisers, on the strength of his signing alone, could commit themselves to long-term partnerships knowing their brand would be seen by millions via TV screens on a regular basis. While Keegan wanted Shearer to help Newcastle break the monopoly Man Utd had on the League, to end that long long wait for a NE1 Championship, as we had all hoped the "final piece of the jigsaw" would help achieve, the Board wanted Shearer to get rich off. And boy have their calculations been spot on. No silver for us lot, but plenty of gold for them. And lots of it. From day one Sir John said that the business side of the club would never come before the footballing side, that money earned by the team on the pitch would be used to bolster it further and for a while, he was true to his word. But that all changed the day we signed Shearer. Keegan signed Big Al for footballing reasons, the Board for financial, splitting one plan into two. One for the business and one for the football team. Both with different ends. For the first time in their wonderful alliance where the two both shared the same ambitions for Newcastle, with SJH the jockey and KK the horse, this conflict of interest was the beginning of the end for them. There would be no finish line for the "dead cert" fans had backed 100% all the way, sadly. That was episode one in a series of developments and events that brought down the curtains on the Sir John/Keegan dream-team. The second installment sticks with Shearer but turns towards the other centre-forward who was already at the club when he arrived - Sir Les Ferdinand. If Keegan taught United fans one thing that unforgettable night at the Milburn reception when he confronted an upset fraction of the tribe who wanted to know why he had sold 41 goal king Andy Cole to Man Utd for £7 million, it was that no one player was ever, or ever would be, bigger than the club while he was manager. Something he had not only preached to the support, but his team and the Board of Directors too. When he walked through the door to "save the club" in 1992 Keegan demanded "one team" on and off the pitch and he got that. But Shearer's arrival changed all that. Sir Les, signed in the Summer of '95 had scored over 25 goals in his first season at the club, subsequently becoming the new No.9 hero who had wiped the loss of the previous shirt owner, from memory. He was the player Keegan had long identified as the man to spearhead the club's assault on securing the game's biggest prizes. Throughout his career Ferdinand had worn the No.9 number which didn't really mean a lot to him at Queens Park Rangers, but at Newcastle he soon realised it's significance to the club and almost mythical symbolism and he desperately wanted to leave an indelible mark in the annals of the shirt's long and distinguished history. He very much treasured that shirt like he treasured his relationship with the fans, his place in the team and every goal he scored for the club he still talks of today with great fondness. And what did the club do as thank you? They took it off him and gave it to Shearer just like that, who, as a Geordie, knows more than anyone what that shirt means. Therefore it's perfectly understandable that he would want it. He had dreamt about wearing it since he was a bairn, and this was his club. He may have been the new man in Toon as it were, but his veins coursed with Black & White blood and it would have been silly of him to not ask for it, even if it was a cheeky request. But first come, first served should have prevailed for the club. Ferdinand was the owner of the shirt, not only earning the right to wear it but also a distinguished member of the No.9 family and it should have remained his for as long as he was a NUFC player. However, by taking the shirt off of Les - who was reluctant at first but in the end good enough to hand it over without a fuss (in public) because he's that type of bloke - the club lost something that day it had worked very hard to forge; the value of respect and loyalty from it's playing staff. They showed a complete lack of it to a player who many had described as the best centre-forward they had seen at the club since Wor Jackie Milburn's day and as a fan, it pisses me off even to this day how such a player, a gentleman as he was and still is and always will be, was treated so appallingly by the club. A club he had helped to second-place in the League, capturing the hearts of every fan who had had the pleasure of seeing this magnificent centre-forward in our shirt. His shirt. Not anymore! That wasn't the 'new' Newcastle United Keegan and Sir John had created, that I loved. At the time, delighted as I was by Big Al's signing, I certainly didn't like what they had done, much less understood their decision. Although today, I now understand. Given the number of themed books, videos, DVDs and above all else, No.9 Shearer shirts they have since sold, it's clear to me at least, that the decision to hand Big Al the No.9 was a clear marketing ploy. Just another sign of money issues impeding the footballing side of things that has become the norm today. Shearer of course has since made light of it, claiming he would have been happy with any number (liar) where as Sir Les has been equally diplomatic about it in public. Unlike the club. But it hurt the big man, no doubt about that. And it would later on influence a decision that would hurt him even more, and cost the club greatly. Some of you who have read through this long winded article thus far will probably be thinking that I'm reading way too much into the handing over of Sir Les' shirt but throughout Keegan's time at the club, he had always stressed that no player would be bigger than the club, that he didn't want Newcastle to be that kind of club where the footballer is the star and not the actual club itself. While a slight stain on KK's copybook, admittedly, it does show for me nonetheless, along with the change on the financial policy at the club as it lurched towards an IPO, the shifts from the original plans that SJH and KK had drawn up and stuck to like glue in their pursuit of transforming Newcastle from 2nd Division survival scrappers to the heavyweight Champion of the world, that were taking place. Shifts that would help bring down the empire if you like and subsequently shape the club we follow today. Shearer of course as expected, has went on to be the star of the show for 10 years almost. And for many of those years shining brighter than the actual club itself. As the goals rained in, his legend at the club grew and grew. Soon to be immortalised forever when he surpasses Wor Jackie's record (it's only a matter of time now), no-one will be able to touch the man. He will go down as United's greatest ever all-time player (and quite rightly). Yet for the club, there has been no legend team during Al's reign as numero uno on the pitch. One brief spell under Sir Bobby promised to create a new Newcastle United football club legend, but in all honesty his 2001-03 team was a poor imitation of the original legend that was Keegan's 'Entertainers' of 92-97. A team while containing stars in every position, was THE star attraction. That decision to value an ironed on number of greater importance to the club than a player of Les' calibre, has in some way in my opinion, seen the return of a mindset that Keegan and Sir John had worked hard to abolish when they first took over club and team affairs respectively. A mentality that KK first witnessed as a player - hero worship of one individual - and which he knew he'd have to stamp out if he was to succeed in creating a successful team. His philosophy was to parade a team to worship, not a star. He achieved that of course, but he helped to undermine it in the end to the point where that mindset has since returned - and big time! Now, all the club have to do is sign a "star" and all is well. Just look at Michael Owen's signing, great as it was. It basically got Shepherd and the Board off the hook despite gross incompetence on a number of levels and this will always be the case so long as the star reigns supreme on Tyneside, and not the team. Stars will always emerge from great teams, but great teams don't often emerge from great stars, as Gordon Lee knew only too well when he peddled Malcolm Macdonald - or 'Supermac' as the fans had christened him. The result? From 15th to 5th. If you're still with me thus far, we have discussed the two things that loosened the wheel nuts of the Sir John Hall/Kevin Keegan Newcastle United; the switch in emphasis from football to money and team to individual. Next up comes the bump in the road that derailed the express train we were all riding! After a successful 1996 where United had captured the world's best all-round centre-forward and crushed arch rivals Manchester United 5-0 in a revenge match for a 4-0 drubbing they meted out at Wembley in the Charity Shield, Newcastle were sitting pretty in 2nd place as the New Year was brought in. Eyes firmly fixed on the Championship. On the surface, everything was going great. Shearer had struck up a lethal partnership with Ferdinand, United were playing free-flowing attacking football that only they could and had just beaten Spurs 7-1 at St. James' Park to underline just how no team could live with Keegan's men when on form. And they were red hot. But the air was to turn cold when Keegan resigned in January of that year. His reign as manager ending as it had started - unexpectedly. Rumours as to why he left were plentiful and all plausible. Stress was blamed and was the most convincing of all the stories 'doing the rounds'. Keegan's boyish looks even at that age, and his once flowing curly locks had disheveled into creased lines and greyness following failure to land the Title in 95-96. I say failure, to be in a position to "lose" the Title as we did was a miracle given where we had come from. But there was no denying it had effected him. He was snappy with the media, often unshaven and less warmly and approachable. His faced showed the signs of a tired man struggling to deal with the pressures of bringing home a long awaited trophy for the success starved Magpies. Keegan's official line was a strange one. He told the football world how he felt sympathy for his opposite number in the dugout during that Spurs match, Gerry Francis who was under sever pressure, and no longer wanted to continue in such a cruel game that sacked people after a run of poor results. As nice a man as he is, a rare commodity in football insofar as he actually did care, that didn't wash. And years later, after various other 'reasons' offered by the man himself all contradicting one another, the truth would be revealed, eventually. It wasn't exactly the stress that forced Keegan to exit from the club he had created but the growing distance that was developing between the Board, himself and his ability to manage the club as he saw fit. The IPO had never sat easy with Keegan in the first place, who was very wary of outsiders messing with 'his' club, non-footballing people as he would later refer to the financial advisers, stock brokers and money men, as. Keegan wasn't any ordinary manager, he was very hands on, very. While he didn't get knee-deep in the financial intricacies of football, leaving all of that in the capable hand of Sir John Hall and the Board of Directors, everything had to go through him nonetheless. Keegan was involved at all levels, from the PR department to the type of biscuits stocked at the club canteen (Jaffa cakes). And to get an insight into just how hands-on he really was, one only needs to look at one of his only major mistakes as United manager. The abolishment of the reserve team. A decision that came with the Board's full backing, they didn't even question it and that was the way things were done at Newcastle. What Keegan wanted, if not absolutely financially impossible, Keegan got. That was the only way he could work, the only way, as he saw it, how he could change and shape Newcastle United for the better. And when he didn't get his own way? He would threaten to walk out. While on the outside that would seem petulant and unhelpful - and it was at times - the Board had come to accept this in Kevin however and actually respected the fact he was prepared to walk away if he wasn't backed 100%. Other managers would have accepted being dictated to, but not Keegan. He was his own man, he lead the revolution and everyone followed. If anything, Keegan was the dictator and results on and off the pitch proved that his "it's my way or the high way" style of management, worked. The Toon's rise and total transformation was nothing short of miraculous. But by 1996, Newcastle didn't need dragged up by the bootstraps any longer, the club had arrived and were second only to Manchester United in every respect as a football club on and off the park. The club was changing off the pitch, heading in a direction that Keegan didn't understand, wouldn't understand and in the end, wouldn't accept. Not when his ability to manage the team was to be undermined. For him, nothing got in the way of the football team. The players and the team came before everything else, even the fans. It had always been that the board pumped money into the team and the team earned the club money which would then be refunded back into the team, turning over an ever endless seam of perpetual growth and success ON THE PITCH. Off the pitch had become more important to the Board however. With the IPO plans well underway, United had many assets but not much cash in the bank. None at all in fact and one of the criteria for floatation, was "money in the safe". The IPO was already costing a small fortune so money would have to be squeezed from somewhere and that somewhere transpired to be Keegan's team, and Les Ferdinand in particular. United had beaten off several rivals for his signature in '95, with Aston Villa even prepared to pay more than what Newcastle had offered QPR but once Les knew of Keegan's interest, he was only going to sign for one club. A year older at 29, Sir Les was still a wanted man though and many clubs would have been prepared to pay United back, what they had originally shelled out for him - £6 million. Aware of this and safe in the knowledge that United already had a goalscorer at the club in the shape of Shearer, the Board went to Keegan for his blessing to sell Ferdinand. Keegan was having none of it however and told them in no uncertain terms he would not accept the League's deadliest partnership being broken up under any circumstances. In typical KK style he actually spun the table on them and asked for more money to strengthen the attack. Eventually a compromise was reached, Keegan would raise funds by selling fringe players and the club would try to release additional funds if the money raised more than covered the money they needed to go in the safe for the IPO. Neither were happy though. The board knew Keegan was playing for time and to sell three or four players would be more time consuming and much harder to sell than one, such as Sir Les who would be snapped up within hours if made available. For Keegan he was privately livid that he had to weaken his squad to appease the "money men". A squad he deemed too weak as it were, anyway. One he wanted to add to not subtract in numbers. Behind his back, the club touted Ferdinand to Villa, Everton, Spurs and even Arsenal in the hope that they could then go to Keegan and show him what others would be prepared to pay for Ferdinand, sort of to coax him into accepting his sale. In the meantime KK had sold Darren Huckerby and Chris Holland just before the turn of the New Year for a combined £1.6 million as his part of the "compromise", two players he didn't really want to sell but did nonetheless. He was adamant Ferdinand would not be sold though and when he found out the club had went behind his back and touted his apparent availability at the right price, he demanded showdown talks, quitting the club as manager only to be persuaded to return. But on his terms. There would be no sale of Ferdinand or any other player, and no meddling in team affairs until the season had finished where he would sit down with the Board and iron out any differences. Newcastle were well placed to go on and win the League and Keegan firmly believed he could achieve that, but only if everyone was pulling in the right direction. The Board for their part still believed in KK and were behind him so they accepted his terms and relented (for the time being) in their pursuit to raise funds, for the good of the club. But while they were prepared to give and take, they found Keegan's obstinacy, unhelpful in the extreme and a few Board members were to question whether he was the right man to lead the club as a PLC (Public Limited Company). Indeed, as part of the IPO plans, the club had to guarantee the City that the manager would be in place for the transition from Limited to Public company, to ensure confidence in the business model amongst would be shareholders and investors. With Keegan threatening to walk out if he didn't get his own way all the time, the Board sought assurances that he was fully committed to the cause, short and long-term, that there would be no more acts of petulance or walk-outs. By that stage KK was drained, both emotionally and physically and a "rest" appealed to him. He wasn't happy with certain people at the club who he felt were undermining him and he wasn't enamoured with the whole IPO one iota. He saw it as a threat to the original plans he had helped create, one that would see the club become the club his ambitions and vision were driven to achieve. He loved the club with all his heart but if he couldn't run the club as he saw fit, in the way he wanted to and had done for 4 years previous, he'd be cheating himself, the fans and most of all, the players, he thought. So in a rare moment of clarity he told the club he would see out the year and leave once the season had finished, hopefully with the Premiership trophy in the bag so he could go out on a high. Once again the Board saw this as KK being typically stubborn, selfish even and how everything was always on his terms and it was time for them to be frank. They gave him an ultimatum; stay, commit long-term, or go! Football's greatest love-affair ended in a war of words, in a bitter divorce. Keegan shocked the footballing world and walked out. Just like that. Leaving behind a football club primed to win the game's biggest prizes on a regular basis. A club with a talented team playing to a wonderful backdrop that was the then newly rebuilt St. James' Park and the thousands of fans who filled it at all times. In every sense, Keegan had achieved the vast majority of what he had set out to do, all that was missing were the Trophies, really. And for a while, with the appointment of Kenny Dalglish to replace him, a manager with a proven track record of winning the big Trophies, Keegan's legacy looked like it would be continued all the way to absolute completion. While Newcastle just missed out on the Championship again, finishing in 2nd place, the club did qualify for the Champions League and with it the riches that would bring in further TV revenue that would dwarf what Sky TV paid out. The only way was up, thanks to the man who made it all possible. But Keegan's legacy didn't last, it ended pretty quickly as it turned out. Despite qualifying for the Champions League, Dalglish had to sell to bring in his own players and what followed was a systematic dismantling of KK's "dream team", culminating in the sale of, yes, you guessed it - Sir Les. It was the player Keegan sold Andy Cole for, the player he quit his job over to keep at the club, who's sale finally signaled the end of the SJH/KK double act in my eyes. The player whose sale not only brought the wheel off but snapped the axle. Ferdinand was sold for £6 million to Spurs to bring in funds. Initially bought to win Newcastle the Premiership Title, the club had went from aiming to win the League and European Cup under Keegan, to looking to survive as a Premiership force after Keegan. As fate would have it, Alan Shearer broke his ankle in a pre-season friendly not long after selling Sir Les which would leave United with a strike force containing Faustino Asprilla, Ian Rush, the ex-Liverpool veteran who Dalglish had snapped up on a free and the highly rated, but inexperienced Danish prodigy that was Jon Dhal Tomasson. A strike force that combined, would see United go from 2nd place to 13th in less than 12 months, out of the Champions League at the first attempt and a total collapse in the FA Cup Final. Would Keegan's team have failed to turn up like Dalglish's? The club argued of course, at 30, that the sale of Ferdinand was too good an offer to turn down. Basically he was sold for non-footballing reasons, but for financial and it was that seismic shift in how the club started to operate, that spelt the end of Keegan and Sir John's era and with it the halcyon days. If I could use one word to describe what went wrong it would be "greed". Sir John Hall and the Board of Directors saw the large amounts of money the club was generating and cashed in. Selling out theirs, ours and KK's dreams to the highest bidder for personal wealth which has saw many millions added to their respective bank balances. Far more than they ever put in which amounts to little under 1 million collectively all told. And they are still coining it in today, at the football club's expense. Restated: Ours! Where as with Keegan, he become too greedy in a football sense. To the point where he stopped working WITH the Board, but AGAINST it. Wanting more players, wanting more money, wanting it all too soon. They say money corrupts the mind but for Newcastle it corrupted the soul. Since those glorious days, there has been no Championship challenge and no real effort to fulfil the true potential of the club of course which I don't know about you, but is being abused as I write. For a club with our gates, stadium, fanbase and turnover, hoping to finish in a European spot is nothing short of unacceptable. Keegan may well have "failed" to win United the ultimate prize, but what he didn't fail in was transforming the mentality of Newcastle United supporters to accept NOTHING but the BEST for our club. And it is the future, or where next for United, that we shall look at in the second part of this Newcastle-Online.com installment. Keep your eyes peeled... © Howaythetoon
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The Halcyon Days: Where Did It All Go Wrong & Where Next For
Newcastle United? (Part 1)
