Hince: Third Tyne lucky?

Paul Hince
18/ 1/2008

THERE is an old adage in soccer that says "never go back."

Kevin Keegan will have heard of it but he turned a deaf ear to it.

And something tells me that a third marriage to Newcastle United will rapidly end in a messy divorce.

I got to know Kevin reasonably well when I covered England's 2000 European Championship campaign in Belgium and Holland for this newspaper.

I must confess that I was mightily impressed with him. He was endlessly patient and witty. By that time I had been the M.E.N. England correspondent for donkey's years. I have counted England managers in, and counted them out. Robson, Taylor, Venables, Hoddle and dear old Sven. But from a press point of view Keegan knocked them all into a cocked hat.

For the first time after England and Her Majesty's press had pitched their tents in the Belgium town of Spa, he gave evening newspaper correspondents like me exclusive conferences.

That will mean little to you, but for us lads it was of enormous importance because we no longer had the morning journalists listening at KK's press conferences and pinching our best stories.

Throughout that tournament Kevin was treated abysmally by the tabloid press, they accused him of being a buffoon with no tactical awareness. How he kept his temper with them I will never know.

Here was a bunch of reporters, who had never kicked a ball in their lives, putting the boot into a person who had won everything the game had to offer and had taken Newcastle to within inches of the Premiership title in his first managerial role.

When he resigned as England's manager after the 1-0 defeat against Germany at Wembley it devastated me to see such a proud and honourable man weeping in the after-match press conference.

Delighted

So I was delighted when, in May 2001, he was unveiled as the new manager of the Blessed Blues.

The next morning I drove to City's training ground in Carrington to interview assistant manager Willie Donachie.

Kevin was there as I parked up, taking delivery of a sponsored car, and I walked over to him with my hand held out to wish him well.

Do you know what he did? He literally ran away shouting that he wasn't talking to the press.

Some time later I asked him why and he said it was because of the battering he took from the media during the European Championships.

My response, that he was not criticised by the Manchester Evening News didn't interest him in the slightest. He looked at me as though I had just crawled out from under a stone.

Keegan was a different man to the one I met and liked in Spa a year earlier. Now every sentence was laced with cynicism. He believed there was a bomb behind every question, where no bomb existed.

I remember a press conference after the mighty Blues had trounced Barnsley away from home. City had strolled into a three goal lead by half time but seemed to pack away their tools in the second with the match ending in a 3-2 victory.

After the match I asked Keegan a straightforward and obvious question. "Did your lads take their feet off the gas pedal in the second half," I asked.

His face went puce. "No they effing didn't," he thundered. "But you'll still write your usual lies anyway."

A former City manager who remains a good friend to this day had phoned me when he heard of Keegan's appointment to warn me that he was a cry baby who would spit out his dummy every time he didn't get his own way.

Awe

Keegan got his own way at Maine Road all right, by the bucket load.

Chairman John Wardle, lovely man that he is, over-indulged Keegan ridiculously in my opinion. I believe he was in awe of Keegan. He repeatedly referred to Keegan as "the boss". The true boss of a football club is the head of the board.

I believe he was afraid that Keegan would do a runner, as he had at Newcastle. John allowed Keegan to embark on a spending spree.

In the transfer window during the summer of 2002 no manager in Europe spent more than Keegan.

Exotic players who no-one had heard of were shipped in at monstrous prices. Keegan wasted millions of his club's money. Many of those players disappeared off the radar after a couple of first team outings to be sold later for peanuts.

He took the Blues back into the Premiership, but his team quite clearly were fathoms out of their depth.

Slowly the Blue Mooners began to suspect that Keegan was not the Messiah after all.

The cheers turned to boos and that is one thing the thin-skinned Keegan cannot tolerate. Any manager with an ounce of guts would have remained and attempted to ride out the storm.

Keegan, clearly, is short of that characteristic. In March 2005, for the third time in his managerial career, he threw in the towel and walked out on his club.

Can a leopard change its spots? Sooner or later the dummy will come out of the pram again.