The Newcastle fiasco

AP

The departure of Keegan meant that Chris Hughton (in pic), once a Spurs full-back and then coach, had reluctantly to move up, from assistant manager to temporary full manager, expressing his wish to be replaced as soon as possible.

“History repeats itself,” wrote Karl Marx, “the first time as tragedy, the second as farce.” He wasn’t talking about Newcastle United but all things considered, he might have been. What turmoil this famous old club has been in and still indeed is! Bought by a corpulent, self-made multi-millionaire from far away London: the north-east of England is indeed another country from the capital. A man who had just made a reported £900 million selling control of his Sports Direct, a sporting goods company. A man who shelled out £134.4 million to buy the Magpies, as they are nicknamed, for their black and white stripes and then disbursed another £110 million to reduce the club’s debts. Mike Ashley himself insists that it was nearer “a quarter of a billion” and that United were in deep financial trouble. Freddie Shepherd, who sold him the club and of whom, alas, we shall hear more, denies this was so.

And Ashley soon endeared himself to the passionate, sentimental Magpies fans by bringing back their beloved Kevin Keegan as manager. Only, in a moment of sheer aberration, to appoint the un-Londoner and former Chelsea and England star, who’d managed Leeds and Millwall, Dennis Wise, as football director, based not in Newcastle but in London. With powers to wheel and deal in the transfer market over Kevin’s head.

So far as Kevin and the enraptured fans were concerned, this was the third coming. Once, as an inspirational if triumphantly self-made player, previously a hero of Liverpool and star at Hamburg, twice European Footballer of the Year; though a sad failure later as manager of England. Not to mention his spell managing Fulham.

A little outside-right who became a dynamic centre-forward, Kevin galvanised the Newcastle team as a player; and did it again when he returned to Gallowgate, the area where their St. James’ Park Stadium stands, as manager. So very nearly gaining them the League Championship, which they had last won in 1927. In 1996, it looked as if the Magpies had at long last done it again. They held a 12-point lead over Manchester United, but then, in Keegan, something snapped. In the American phrase, he was “psyched out” by the Manchester United manager Alex Ferguson, who ran a shrewd and cynical verbal campaign against him. Newcastle collapsed, Manchester United won the League by four points. The following season, Manchester United won it again, but this time with an eight-point lead over Newcastle who have never been as good again. Indeed the only major trophy they have won since their three FA Cup final successes in 1951, 1952 and 1955 was the old European Inter Cities Fairs Cup, now the UEFA Cup, back in 1960.

Keegan was outraged when Wise and his cohort began wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, and for me the writing was all to clearly on the wall when, near the end of last season, Newcastle played Arsenal in London and at the Press Conference afterwards, I asked Keegan whether Dennis Wise was there. Kevin said he didn’t know; but, in fact, it transpired that Wise was indeed there, watching from the stands. Arsene Wenger, the Arsenal manager, has just said that it is intolerable that a manager should be blamed for failure when he hasn’t been in command of his own transfer policy and he himself is so powerfully entrenched at Arsenal that he need never, in the foreseeable, future, find himself in such a position. But, as a Frenchman, he surely knows that in the major European clubs, the actual manager can only recommend buying and selling of players to the so-called technical director and the club directors themselves. Besides, to be fair to Wise and his collaborators, they have made the shrewd acquisitions in the current Argentine internationals, centre-back Coloccini and left-flanker Gutierrez.

Newcastle have, for many a long year, been something of a controversial club. The idol of their fans and star of those three Cup Finals in the 1950s was the flying centre-forward, nicknamed “Wor Jackie” Milburn. He got both Magpies’ goals in the final of 1951 against Blackpool, then a power, and another, unusually with his head, against Manchester City in 1955. In subsequent years, I got to know him well, and he once told me somewhat scathingly how well certain directors were then doing out of the club. Thus, Stan Seymour himself had a sports goods business and supplied the club with all its kit. Mr. Rutherford, a surgeon, performed all operations on injured players. And the third director, a local builder, had teams of men going round the city renovating the club-owned houses!

A few years ago, there was a major scandal, when two directors, the main shareholder Freddie Shepherd and Douglas Hall, son of Sir John Hall, the mogul who for some years had successfully financed and overseen the club, were caught out in a European hostelry, during a foreign team engagement by an undercover journalist, deriding the women of Newcastle as “dogs”, and pouring scorn on the fans who bought disgracefully overpriced black and white team jerseys. Douglas Hall and Shepherd had to issue a grovelling apology to the fans on a myriad of pamphlets, but Shepherd had the shares and he stayed in command, till Mike Ashley bought him out.

Ashley set about buying himself the affection of the initially delighted fans — Keegan at first shared their enthusiasm — dressing his fat body in a Newcastle shirt and sitting among the supporters themselves. Something he dare not do now, for fear of being attacked. There was a particularly gruesome moment on the occasion of Newcastle’s most recent visit to Arsenal when television showed Ashley in his black and white shirt guzzling a pint of lager in one long swallow, then shaking his head hard, like a dog coming out of water.

The departure of Keegan meant that poor, likeable Chris Hughton, once a Spurs full-back and then coach, had reluctantly to move up, from assistant manager to temporary full manager, expressing his wish to be replaced as soon as possible. The problem being that, so long as Ashley is there, and selling in the present market is anything but easy, no permanent manager can surely be appointed.