‘What I loved playing under Keegan and Dalglish was that we could do what we wanted during the week, as long as we produced on the Saturday . . . Just as long as you go out, beat that team, then go on to the next week and do it again . . . Keegan and Dalglish, they just told you to go out and play . . .’
David Batty
‘At a football club, there’s a Holy Trinity – the players, the manager and the supporters. Directors don’t come into it. They are only there to sign the cheques, not to make them out. We’ll do that – they just sign them.’
Bill Shankly
In November of 1971 West Ham came to Anfield, and Shankly entered the home changing room directly from having given the visitors his customary sharp-eyed welcome. He drew Keegan aside and spoke in head-shaking terms (‘Jesus, son . . .’) of the shambling, sleep-deprived figure Bobby Moore had cut, how Keegan would surely destroy him on the park. Liverpool went out and won – after which Shankly drew Keegan aside again, and shook his head over the towering stature of Moore’s performance. This was quintessential Shankly, the sort of canny man management that had made a huge impression on the player.
As the 1995-96 season came round, Keegan’s fourth full campaign as Newcastle boss, there remained a sense that the question against which he tested his judgement as a manager, in any situation, was: What would Shanks do? – above all, in his desire for a bond with the support, and with the vigour that he put into fostering self-belief in his players. As John Beresford said of Keegan’s motivational manners, ‘He’d get the [opposition] team sheet off the ref, walk into the dressing room, look at it for a bit and go, “Jesus, if we’re not 2-0 up after five minutes against this lot, there’s something wrong.” Then he’d screw it up and throw it in the bin.’
Jim Crawford, a young Irish forward recruited by Keegan from Bohemians, quickly cottoned on to this style in training: ‘You’d be jogging around the place and you might stop to do a stretch and Keegan would say, “Look, we’re the best squad in this country. Look at all these people coming out to see you train. Why? Because you’re the best.” He’d turn to Ginola and he’d say, “Fans are paying so much money to watch you play.” ’ Arguably, Newcastle were over-motivated. Arguably, too, they were under-drilled.
But the new season saw Newcastle on the upswing in some style, their free-flowing and attacking proficiencies hugely abetted by the addition of David Ginola to whip balls into the area, and of Les Ferdinand to hammer at them with boot or head (‘Zebedee’ became Ferdinand’s nickname in point of his prowess at jumping high for the header). Just off Ferdinand through the middle was the still-ingenious Beardsley, and Keith Gillespie was out right doing the thing Keegan had professedly got him in for.
Manchester United’s season had got under way a good deal less surefootedly, as Ferguson’s refashioned side – boasting Scholes, the Neville brothers, Butt and Beckham from the bench – took a first-day beating, 3-1, at Aston Villa. ‘He needs to buy players,’ pronounced Alan Hansen on Match of the Day, the ex-Liverpool defender now installed in the TV pundit’s chair. ‘You can’t win anything with kids.’ And yet, kids and all, they won their next five, including a 2-1 win at Ewood Park against a listless Blackburn, and would go 10 weeks unbeaten.
Newcastle, though, got to Christmas with 14 wins, three draws and just two defeats. Manchester United were without a win in five when they welcomed Keegan’s team to a frozen Old Trafford, but Andy Cole and Roy Keane scored in a 2-0 win. Ferguson’s team, though, lost at Tottenham on New Year’s Day then drew at home with Villa, while Newcastle were back reeling off the victories; and on 20 January 1996, a 2-1 beating of Bolton put Newcastle 12 points clear at the top. It wasn’t meant to be so easy. Dalglish’s Blackburn hadn’t managed to catch Manchester United from such a disadvantage in 1994. But Newcastle’s attacking style just kept yielding three-point returns. The way Keegan had got them playing had hoovered up a great reserve of goodwill and admiration among fans without a dog in this particular title fight: his team were now dubbed ‘The Entertainers’. ‘Keegan never told us to take the ball into the corner if we were 2-1 up,’ Rob Lee recalled. ‘We were told to try to get a third goal, then a fourth.’
Pragmatically, Newcastle could probably have used another defender to help with the grinding-out of results whenever things, inevitably, got a bit tighter and tenser at the sharp end of the season. Defence, though, was just not Keegan’s priority. Alan Hansen, in his pundit’s role and now versed in the ‘to be fair’ manners of the ex-pro, would note that without that open style of play Newcastle ‘might not have got to the top of the table in the first place’. Instead, they were top by some distance, and the title was Keegan’s to lose. Lose it he surely did.
In March of 1972 Malcolm Allison’s Manchester City, leading the First Division title race by four points, had forked out a club-record fee for QPR’s maestro Rodney Marsh, hoping this was the stroke to make the damn thing certain. In the 20-20 hindsight of most onlookers, Marsh actually proved to be a spanner in the works of a functional set-up, disturbing the team’s formation. (Marsh, over time, candidly agreed: ‘I have to hold my hands up – I cost Manchester City the 1972 league championship.’)
The Marsh example was being widely debated not long after Newcastle acquired Colombian forward Faustino Asprilla from Parma for close to £7 million in February of 1996. It was not a luxury purchase. Ginola had missed a few games with injury, so there was room in the side. A private plane brought this rare bird of a player, clad in a fine fur coat from the Milanese designer Byblos, to a snow-blown Tyneside. The next day Newcastle played at Middlesbrough. Asprilla was supposed to be spectating from the warmth of the bench, and he had enjoyed a little wine with his lunch. But Newcastle went one down, and Keegan threw Asprilla into the action for Gillespie in the second half. He transformed the game, first with a Cruyff-like turn on the left followed by a cross for Steve Watson to head home; after which he set up Ferdinand for the winner. It was a very cavalier, very Keegan kind of a debut.
Gillespie, though, came to feel he had been fully displaced from the side, depriving Ferdinand of the crosses he preferred; while Asprilla playing off Ferdinand pushed Beardsley too far right. To be fair, Beardsley was never so one-track. Away to West Ham Asprilla actually started in place of an injured Rob Lee, and Keegan lined up with five defenders. Asprilla hit a post, as did Peacock, and a couple of decent penalty shouts went unrewarded. Ferdinand missed a great chance with Newcastle 1-0 down. But West Ham bagged a second and that was that. Newcastle then went to struggling Manchester City, rearmed with Ginola, but needed three equalisers to take away a point. Asprilla scored one and made one, but threw an elbow at City defender Keith Curle; and it was clear his misleadingly languid, suddenly flaring style of play had an analogue in his temper.
It was also clear about Asprilla that he lacked the savour for anything much going on after Newcastle lost possession. This was not a weakness he had introduced to Keegan’s team. Its defensive unit was not sorted; hard shifts were not being put in. Keegan knew as much to realise that a little erring on the side of caution could still see Newcastle home in comfort. On the last day of February, emulating Dalglish, he procured David Batty from Blackburn as a midfield cruncher for £3.75 million, describing him as the ‘last piece in the jigsaw’. Batty came just in time for the vital visit of Manchester United to St James’ Park on 4 March.
Newcastle’s first-half performance was near-faultless: Lee and Batty bossed things in front of a flat back four; Asprilla got around and was full of good touches. Ferdinand, if anyone, was at fault for a couple of spurned chances. But Newcastle ran into Peter Schmeichel on a peerless day, as stalwart as Tim Flowers had been in thwarting them back in May 1995. Six minutes into the second half, Andy Cole evaded Albert, passed to his left and Phil Neville hoisted a cross to the far post that Beresford could not intercept. Eric Cantona watched the ball, volleyed it into the ground, and the bounce took it past Srnicek. It was a counterattacking goal, and it decided the game. ‘If they want to know who is the best team in the country,’ Keegan ventured afterwards, ‘they only have to look at the tape of the first half.’ But you haven’t hammered anyone 0-0, certainly not after 45 minutes. Newcastle’s lead was down to a point, with a game in hand.
Newcastle rebounded by thrashing West Ham, but a 2-0 defeat at Arsenal put them right back on edge, since Manchester United were cranking out the victories. (They were to win 13 of their last 15.) The first Arsenal goal was lost to not marking up at a corner, the second came from Warren Barton gifting possession. Asprilla blithely walked out of Keegan’s changing-room post-mortem, hopping on the back of a motorbike ride that he had prearranged. Manchester United went top on goal difference, then got past Tottenham, and uncatchable Newcastle were suddenly playing catch-up.
They travelled to Anfield to meet Roy Evans’ exciting but unfinished Liverpool side, third in the league, loaded with the threat of goals in young local hero Robbie Fowler and the pricily acquired but moodily unsettled Stan Collymore. ‘The one thing we said before the game,’ Ferdinand recalled, ‘was “Let’s keep it tight”.’ And yet there was no black-and-white marker on Fowler as he met Collymore’s fine cross to give Liverpool the lead. Asprilla, though, found the response, beating Neil Ruddock – not the stiffest test – and picking out Ferdinand who did well to shape and crash a leveller high into the net. Then came a lovely flowing Newcastle move from the back, Ferdinand feeding Ginola who side-footed home smartly.
Shortly thereafter, Liverpool right back Jason McAteer decided he had sod-all chance of catching Ginola in forward motion, but better odds of pushing forward himself, since Ginola showed no signs of tracking back to help out John Beresford. It was McAteer who supplied Steve McManaman to pierce a backpedalling Newcastle defence with a pass from which Fowler made it 2-2. Asprilla once more stepped forward to get Newcastle out of the hole, Lee releasing him to achieve a delicate dink with the outside of his boot. Could Keegan’s team now show its mettle, keep it tight, shut the game down?
They could do nothing of the sort. Collymore slammed in a shot across goal to level. In stoppage time Newcastle had five men back and, still, there was no one near Collymore when John Barnes picked him out and Liverpool had their winner. Sky’s cameras found Keegan slumped over the advertising boards. It was ideal soap opera stuff for Sky, a game with all the right dramatic elements, which the broadcaster would celebrate as a ‘classic’ contest. But as was now clear even to those neutrals who liked to cast an approving eye over the attacking verve of Keegan’s team, it was a contest for second place. (Three days later Liverpool proved the true state of their title credentials by losing at relegation-threatened Coventry.) A year before at Anfield Dalglish had clinched the title with Blackburn; but it was Anfield where Keegan and Newcastle saw it slip away.
David Batty would say of the team Keegan built that it ‘was the best I played in’; but, unlike Dalglish’s Rovers, this team proved unable to stay in front down the final straight. A late brace by Beardsley got Newcastle past QPR but a loss at Blackburn two days later served the coup de grâce. Keegan deployed Lee on the wing and Newcastle looked narrow. It was goalless with 20 minutes to go when Keegan swapped Asprilla for Gillespie, and Ray Harford sent on a young Geordie, Graham Fenton, for Mike Newell. Gillespie had a hand in setting up Batty to shoot Newcastle in front, and it remained like so with four minutes left. Then a Shearer shot was blocked and fell to Fenton who bundled it in off Shaka Hislop’s knee. Still Newcastle strove for a winner, only to concede instead: route-one stuff; Shearer collecting to release Fenton who squeezed the ball home. Afterwards Keegan looked truly crestfallen, insisting the cause was not yet lost, surely knowing better. ‘The final chapter has not been written . . . I would like us to finish runners-up if we can’t win it. This club has not finished runners-up for a long time.’
Still, if Ferguson’s team were very much in the box seat there were no medals on the table yet, and their gaffer was by no means sitting calmly above the fray, paring his nails. Manchester United were well beaten at Southampton, not helped by a fit of Dalglish-like superstition from Ferguson who sent his team out for the second half changed into their away strip. They then made hard work of beating a Leeds side reduced to 10 men, after which Ferguson resorted to the sort of goading that had left no visible mark on the reticent Dalglish, but which seemed to inflame the combustible Keegan. (‘At the time,’ Terry McDermott would tell it, Keegan ‘didn’t really like Ferguson’.) Master of the us-against-them motivational style, knowing that Leeds were Newcastle’s next opponents, Ferguson claimed victimhood. ‘You think for some of these teams it’s more important to get a result against Manchester United and stop them winning the league than anything else,’ he observed. ‘Of course, when it comes to Newcastle, you wait and see the difference.’ It was a gratuitous suggestion, mere devilment, though Ferguson could quite possibly convince himself such imagined iniquities were real.
Newcastle eked out a win over Leeds with a header from Gillespie. They were three points behind, two games left apiece. Sky was covering every game in the run-in and it was a tolerably satisfied Keegan who left the Newcastle changing room to do his duty before Sky cameras over a relay to studio presenters Richard Keys and Andy Gray. Keegan set forth cheerily enough. But soon there was a reference to ‘slanderous’ remarks by Ferguson – and Keegan was not having this marked down to banter. He had never liked the sound of an accusation of players going soft, taking it easy – he had not let Shanks get away with it, much less Lawrie McMenemy, least of all Ferguson whom he hadn’t played for and didn’t much care for. Thus Keegan spilled his vessels live on TV, louder than he had intended on account of wearing heavy headphones for studio relay, jabbing a finger for unneeded emphasis: ‘I’ve kept really quiet, but I’ll tell you something – he went down in my estimation when he said that . . . I’ll tell you, you can tell him now if you’re watching it, we’re still fighting for this title, and he’s got to go to Middlesbrough and get something, and . . . and . . . I’ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if we beat them. Love it.’
It was quite a show. McDermott, having watched the broadcast in some incredulity, reached Keegan on the phone. ‘Ah, sod him,’ said Keegan, still seething with regard to his nemesis at Old Trafford. Were Newcastle’s players galvanised by the boss’s free-flowing emotions? According to David Ginola, the psychological change in Keegan was an alarming sight: ‘We saw Keegan change . . . he was fighting with [Ferguson].’ Newcastle had to win their last two games at a canter to have the slightest chance. They won neither.
Keegan could not have envisaged the extent to which his public image, into which he had put so much graft and applied so much polish, would come to be defined by that flailing and profitless outburst against Ferguson. No golden goals for Liverpool or England or Hamburg, no pop records or TV ads or Superstars heroics would be recalled with such relish in the coming internet age as ‘I will love it if we beat them’. And yet, for seasoned Keegan-watchers it was nothing so unusual: the resurgence of the heart-on-his-sleeve ‘emotional lad’, as observed in sympathy by Bob Paisley, and vindictively by Johnny Giles. Here, too, was a version of the driven hater of ‘cheating’ and its taints, who butted heads with Shankly and McMenemy and Hamburg teammates over this principle. But to those same students of his career it was a reminder, too, that Keegan’s top-drawer medals were things of the past: none since Hamburg’s title win in 1979, while their European Cup final loss to Forest in 1980 had perhaps been supplanted as his bitterest career disappointment. Having failed – or, rather, not succeeded – Keegan would have to regroup and refit his side, as Ferguson had done the previous summer, and try, try again.
‘Had we done it,’ Keegan insisted 10 years after the event, ‘we may have changed the thinking of some very dour people who almost indoctrinate that you have to work from the back.’ Perhaps he had the likes of Dalglish’s Blackburn side in mind but was too polite to say. Still, with regard to their respective mid-1990s duels with Ferguson, history would record that Dalglish succeeded and Keegan failed, by a gnat’s whisker at either side, and yet the whisker was effectively as wide as a chasm. Keegan would carry on stubbornly insisting it was worth it to have lost against Liverpool for the spirit in which the game had been played: Geordie fans, he claimed, wanted entertainment above all, more even than winning. But it didn’t sound plausible. Keegan, such a driven winner as a player, seemed to be locating himself in a contented losing party of one.
In late August Dalglish quit the role of Blackburn’s director of football, by mutual consent, for the relationship had clearly run its course. Keegan, though, agreed to press on at Newcastle, the club ditching an implausible 10-year contract agreed in 1994 and replacing it with a more sensible two-year deal. Keegan had transformed the club’s fortunes and the club knew his worth to them, even while cultivating a set of commercial interests that didn’t truly coincide with those of their charismatic boss.
Newcastle’s business plans were driven by John Hall and Freddie Fletcher, a born maximiser of revenues. The football club had grown quickly, its turnover vaulting, despite that nagging absence of silverware. For Hall, who had already announced the ill-fated creation of a ‘Newcastle sporting club’ to comprise football, rugby, ice hockey and basketball teams, St James’ Park was self-evidently too small and what was wanted was a new 55,000-seater stadium next door on Leazes Park, the old ground making an ideal roofed arena for other games.
These ambitions were no longer bizarre. The City was now convinced of football’s growth potential. Pension funds and insurance companies were buying shares in listed clubs. The European Championships of 1996 saw England reach the semi-finals, tantalisingly close to success, Alan Shearer claiming the Golden Boot. Clubs had proven revenue streams not just from the gates but from Sky, replica shirts and sponsorship. The UEFA Champions League was the big dream pot. The owners and directors could smell what it would mean to them, based on the Tottenham Hotspur model of forming a ‘holding’ plc, so as to bypass the FA’s rules restraining personal money-making.
Leeds United was bought by the Caspian media group and floated on the stock exchange. A clutch of clubs declared their intent to float, including Aston Villa, Chelsea and Newcastle. Newcastle’s balance sheet and cash flow could not compare to Manchester United’s until they properly became a power in the land – title winners, if not double winners. Keegan had spent £60 million on players. How much more speculation to accumulate could he be permitted? Flotation would mean being properly business-like. The prospectus for investors would describe the club’s business as ‘selling viewing rights to football matches’ and managing ‘high quality revenue streams’. Newcastle would have to be managed in a way the City understood. Arguably, the fun part of Keegan’s ride since February of 1992 was over.
Keegan may also have sensed, rather dolefully, that his best chance of winning the title had gone begging, for all the reserves of optimism and purpose on which he could draw. Since leaving Hamburg he had made a habit of walking out on situations where his own expectations weren’t being met. Still, he prepared for another season at Newcastle. When his players got on a plane for a tour in Thailand, he stayed behind for a bit of business. David Batty had not, in fact, proved the final piece in the jigsaw; the purchase of Alan Shearer from Blackburn, returning the local-born hero to the ground where he had grown up idolising Keegan, was a present meant to put a smile back on Keegan’s face, albeit at a price of £15 million which Jack Walker insisted on having in one upfront instalment. Newcastle didn’t flinch, and went cap in hand to a friendly lender.
The not noticeably sentimental Shearer had serious talks with Manchester United, too; but a meeting with Keegan in Cheshire sorted out the decisive matters. Shearer would get £25,000 a week, and Les Ferdinand would receive a fait accompli to surrender the number nine shirt, in line with Shearer’s private aspirations and the club’s projected replica shirt sales. Shearer was duly unveiled at St James’, before 16,000 fans who reasoned that, surely, the pièce de résistance had to be close now, with Keegan’s inspiring leadership and Shearer’s goals in the bank.
In fact, Newcastle got off to a poor start, stuffed in the Charity Shield by a gloating Manchester United, then garnering just three points from nine. If the majority of observers had decided that the Achilles heel of the previous season’s side lay in defence, Keegan was not obviously of the same mind. Facing Halmstads of Sweden in the opener of their UEFA Cup campaign he played 2-3-5, with a forward line of Asprilla, Shearer, Ferdinand, Beardsley and Ginola. ‘The only thing that was missing,’ Keegan enthused, ‘was a goalkeeper with a woolly jersey and a flat cap.’ Putting five goals past Ferguson’s Manchester United delighted the faithful, and Asprilla’s maverick brilliance kept them progressing in Europe. But regular match days saw more off-colour stuff.
Mark Lawrenson was asked by Keegan to have a look at the team in action and to work with the defenders in training. Lawrenson saw that for all the ‘great pride’ Keegan had in the team he had assembled, he understood ‘that if they were going to win the league, he would have to change the style’. Lawrenson set himself to ensuring Albert and Peacock stayed in position. There was a slightly more intractable problem in an observable tension between Ginola and Shearer. Newcastle’s new number nine was not greatly interested in Ginola’s love of beating a marker, more in the quality of balls he got to his feet and head.
To oversee its flotation, Newcastle drafted in a banker named Mark Corbidge from NatWest Markets. Keegan, though, didn’t care for the plan Corbidge had been hired to realise. The board were in line to make pretty good coin. Keegan would get a million-pound bonus three months after flotation – £600,000 after the hated tax. But Freddie Fletcher could expect £750,000, and Mark Corbidge £300,000 for his year’s work. Keegan knew his own worth but, as ever, had his views on the worth of others, too. Whatever the directors knew about football, whatever Keegan thought to their opinions, he would feel henceforth that they were more concerned about banking their wedge than the good of the team. After all Keegan had invested of himself in Newcastle, the status he had been awarded on Tyneside, he wanted to stand with the people. He had given his blessing to the selling of 10-year named seat packages to season ticket holders, and those deals were going to be undone.
Worse, the club was pressing Keegan to offload players in order to offset that grandiose one-off hit of the Shearer purchase. £6 million was the magic number Newcastle had in mind to recoup by Christmas, and Les Ferdinand was £6 million-worth of striker: the possibility of selling him was put on the table and stayed there. But Keegan could not have relished the idea of going before the Newcastle fans with a rerun of the Andy Cole situation, one where he had, at least, been able to adduce footballing reasons for the sale. Keegan sold Chris Holland and Darren Huckerby for a bit under £2 million, but that would not get the job done.
Around this time a local schoolteacher and writer called Jonathan Tulloch made Keegan’s acquaintance through some discussions about making a charity record; and he was witness to Keegan’s reservations about Newcastle’s direction of travel. ‘He was referring to the directors as “them up there” . . . Freddie Fletcher came in and was spitting feathers. You could see the friction . . .’ Fletcher, one of his advocates back in 1992, was no longer onside. Keegan’s record was one of not dallying if things were not to his satisfaction. He could, clearly, get by on his own resources, and another managerial role could be his easily enough. His irrepressibility was gone; he seemed heavy-hearted, looking for the exit.
On the pitch Newcastle were in retreat. Seven games without a win culminated in defeat at Blackburn on Boxing Day, after which Keegan sat down with Fletcher, Freddy Shepherd, Douglas Hall and Corbidge. The club was in a delicate spot: if they agreed that Keegan was on his way they would be obligated to say as much to potential investors in the flotation prospectus, not a move that would project stability or inspire confidence. Keegan expressed readiness to stay until the end of the season. But then news of that arrangement leaked into the papers: the worst scenario all round.
Keegan’s team, perhaps realising it was time to win one for the gaffer, returned to form with bells on, destroying Spurs 7-1 and Leeds 3-0, then fighting for a draw at Charlton in the cup. But it seemed Keegan was there only in body – the spirit was gone. On Tuesday, 7 January 1997 the club’s senior executives reconvened at Wynyard Hall, joined now by Newcastle’s lawyer, and gave Keegan an ultimatum, to either sign a new two-year contract or leave forthwith. Keegan chose to go, and papers had already been drafted for his signature.
The news reached the team at training the following morning. ‘I am a bit reluctant to use the analogy,’ Mark Lawrenson would remember, ‘but it was like someone close had died. I think Peter Beardsley did say that.’ For Newcastle fans this was a heart-in-the-boots moment to rank with Liverpool’s loss of Shankly in 1974, or of Dalglish in 1991. They could not know the full thorny story – only that the man who had, for a second time, saved and revitalised the club was leaving again, this time amid clouds of ill will.
Who could possibly replace ‘King Kev’? In fact, Freddie Fletcher had got on to Bobby Robson in Barcelona directly – John Hall having received a solid tip from a sportswriter friend that Robson’s wife Elsie hankered for a return to England; that Robson, moreover, might be on the verge of an unwanted kick upstairs at the Nou Camp, so as to accommodate Louis van Gaal as team manager. Fletcher, Shepherd, Hall and Corbidge flew out to Barcelona and found Robson amenable to their presentation. But by the time they were back at Newcastle airport Robson had changed his mind, deciding (incorrectly, in the event) that Barcelona would probably stick by him. One proven winner was off the table, then. Where else could Newcastle find a man with silverware adorning every stage of his CV, and an aura of football brilliance remotely comparable to Keegan’s? On a moment’s reflection, the obvious answer was ‘Southport’.
Just before Christmas of 1996 Kenny Dalglish had accepted an appointment as ‘business development manager’ for Rangers chairman David Murray’s public relations company, Carnegie Sports International. This was only to formalise a function Dalglish had been performing ad hoc, running the rule over possible recruitments for Rangers from Europe. But the printer ink hardly dried on that deal, for come 14 January 1997 Dalglish was manager of Newcastle United, on a three-and-a-half-year contract carefully crafted with an eye to the share price at which the club would float in a few months’ time.
The second coming of a Dalglish-for-Keegan exchange made a feast for any backward-looking sportswriters who had seen both men play: the solemn passing-on of the red number seven shirt was now transmuted into a black-and-white branded bench coat. Who among them could resist the sport of wondering whether Dalglish might, once again, go to a place where Keegan had done great things and achieve something just a little greater himself? Twenty years on it had a pleasing symmetry, and a wager that most wise heads concerned for the fortunes of Newcastle felt worthy of approval: a promising diversion of the funds needed to buy success in the direction of a man who had lately overseen that very accomplishment at Blackburn.
Keegan broke his silence to the Mirror on 7 February, three weeks into Dalglish’s tenure, indicating that he wholly approved of the choice of his successor: ‘They are in the safest possible hands . . . if anybody can lead that team to the top Kenny Dalglish is the man . . . If he brings a trophy to St James’ Park he will experience a public reaction and celebration the likes of which he has never seen, even at Liverpool and Blackburn . . . He replaced me once before, remember . . .’
But the seeming symmetry was just an illusion. True, one esteemed footballing man was warm-heartedly endorsing another for a job. But the job, somehow, had gotten to be about an awful lot more than just football. Over 20 years, the game had changed beyond recognition, the stakes were different, and making a success of management, as both men had learned, was a far harder set of yards to make than achieving glory with boots on.