Guess who's back...

Last night, Mike Ashley, the esteemed owner of Newcastle United, pulled off a masterstroke by appointing Kevin Keegan as manager. Rarely in football, is it possible to achieve the feat of leaving fans speechless; not the Newcastle fans of course, they have been partying like its 1996 and they have a 12 point lead. However, for the rest of us, this turn of events is bewildering, preposterous, amusing but also ever so slightly uplifting.

It’s a sign of how extraordinary this story is that the first channel I tuned into on my return home was Sky Sports News (SSN). Usually, finding yourself watching SSN is as good a barometer one can find that you should be doing something better with your time than watching TV. Presumably this is why it is almost the very last channel you land upon on a standard Freeview set-up (when even the likes of BBC Parliament and Smile TV have come up short). This is a channel that regards Steve Finnan signing a new contract as ‘BREAKING NEWS’ and a standard Beckham sound-bite as an ‘EXCLUSIVE!’. Keegan’s return to Newcastle was a broadcasting orgasm for SSN, and this purveyor of hyperbole did not disappoint. First it assailed the viewer with happy memories of yesteryear to Kirsty McColl’s Days in the background. All manner of old friends you’d forgotten (Cole, Beardsley, Scott Sellars) banging the goals in, Keegan and McDermott celebrating. It was hard not to get a lump in your throat. Then followed the darker days at Newcastle, characterised by Asprilla, Cantona’s volley that let Man Utd back in to the title race, and, of course, “I would love it!”. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any more OTT the anchorman appeared,

“Its one of those stories, where you’ll remember where you were when you heard it”

The implication being that this was an event of such seismic proportions, that it rivals Diana’s death and the destruction of the World Trade Centre. For the record, I was sat at my desk and my mate Carl told me via e-mail, should anyone bring this up in 20 years time.

Of course the problem Sky Sports News had (and hence the style over substance approach), was that beyond the announcement, there was nothing else to say or show. Neither KK nor Mike Ashley had held a press conference, and the best they could do was that Keegan would ‘probably’ be attending the game that night. That was sufficient for 20,000 or so Geordies who unwilling to pay £25 to watch a match of football, were willing to pay it to watch a match of football that Kevin Keegan was ‘probably’ at, sat in the Directors Box. SKY attempted to get what they could on the subject out of the team assembled for Football Tonight (Paul Walsh and Matt Le Tissier I seem to recall), but the real action was now over on the BBC where Alan Shearer was summarising the wretched game between Man City and West Ham. The beeb had struck gold here, presumably for the first time pleased to have engaged Shearer’s monotone ramblings. However, instead of listening to Shearer’s KK endorsement, we were treated to his own uninteresting flirtations with the job (“they called me, but wanted experience”) before he launched his campaign to become Keegan’s number two. Presumably he picked up this tip from Samuel L Jackson, who managed to blag himself into the Star Wars prequels by openly stating he wanted to be in them on Chris Evans’ TFI Friday a few years back. Still, if Newcastle supporters liked Keegan, just imagine the Shearer/Keegan dream ticket.

Ashley has been criticised in some quarters for this selection, but you have to hand it to him, the fans are generally right behind him, which should make his (and KK’s) life easier in the lean times. It’s almost as if Newcastle is being run like My Football Club, only on a considerably grander scale. I am not one of these parochial idiots who insists that we must have an English manager in charge of the national team, but it is good to see that Ashley has hired not only and Englishman, but a local. There is a kind of throwback in the appointment to a better time in football, when foreign players were an exciting novelty, who either thrilled us (Cantona, Ginola) or couldn’t cut it (Asprilla, Amokachi). When the backbone of a team at the top-end of the Premiership was English; Barton, Beresford, Peacock, Batty, Fox, Ferdinand. Yes, the Premiership had a ‘lower quality’ of player, but it was certainly a great deal more fun. Good work Mr Ashley; if it fails, you will have my sympathy, and not the usual derision big team calamities attract.