6 More Keegan Revelations

I cam across this about the recent talk in... more info plus a video......

http://whatculture.com/sport/newcastle-6-shocking-revelations-kevin-keegans-departure.php/2

1. Newcastle Turned Down Luka Modric

Back in 2008, newspapers widely reported that Newcastle were on the verge of a transfer coup, as Croatian midfielder Luka Modric was about to sign for the club in a £12m deal from Dinamo Zagreb, but ultimately, the player signed for Spurs.
Keegan has now revealed where the deal went sour: Newcastle had stolen a march on their rival suitors – including Spurs, Chelsea and Arsenal – as Modric’s agent was a fan of Keegan when he played, and had been keen to link his client up with his hero, and the deal progressed as far as Modric visiting the club. But then Tony Jimenez, somewhat unthinkably, ruled that Modric was simply not good enough for the Premier League, and the club passed on the deal, to Keegan’s utter astonishment.
Spurned by their first choice, Modric and his agent went to Tottenham and subsequently proved Jimenez’s opinion to be entirely wrong.

2. He Has Sympathy For Alan Pardew

By his own admission, Keegan would feel reluctant to criticise any manager in Pardew’s situation, considering the leadership situation he is forced to work with on a daily basis.
With the Hyypia example – as well as the Luka Modric revelation that tops this feature – Keegan said fans should consider that Pardew could well be facing the same adversity that he had to endure, and doesn’t necessarily deserve to be castigated. Keegan’s drawn-out point was that it is not as clear-cut a situation as fans might suspect from outside.
When pressed by a member of the audience, seemingly intent on asking whether Pardew owed Ashley money – an enduring rumour that fans seem drawn to beyond all else, despite the unlikeliness – Keegan stated he didn’t know the situation behind the manager’s appointment.

3. Tony Jimenez Had No Football Experience

Somewhat astonishingly, on the subject of Tony Jimenez, who was employed as Vice President under Ashley in the management structure that attracted so much criticism, Keegan seemed particularly animated.
The most quotable of his mentions of Jimenez suggest that the international businessman – who was apparently charged with trying to sell Newcastle for Ashely in Dubai, and also became involved in the purchase of Charlton Athletic in 2008 – had no experience in football. His only claim, according to Keegan’s research, to being a football man came from being a steward at Chelsea.
That is probably an exaggeration, given that Jimenez was vice president of a club in Cyprus 4 years before he was at Newcastle, and was a close friend of Juande Ramos, to the extent that he helped broker the Spaniard’s move to Spurs, but his statement is a chilling indictment of the dynamic between the then vice president and manager.

4. Mike Ashley Was Not The Real Problem

As Keegan said on ESPN ahead of Alan Pardew’s first game – at home against Liverpool – the problem with the set-up in the upper echelons of Newcastle is that Mike Ashely “doesn’t know anything about football” and didn’t surround himself with people who “know what they’re doing.’ The long and short of that, according to the former boss, is that the club is now a shambles.
During the talk-in, Keegan echoed the same sentiment, though apparently with less ire than he has done in other interviews, especially in terms of his opinion of Ashley.
When asked about his second stint at the club, Keegan almost apologetically said his brief time under Ashley had been “okay” – to the shock of some fans, no doubt – and that the real problem is with the people the Newcastle owner surrounds himself with, naming in particular, Tony Jimenez, Dennis Wise, and later, Derek Llambias.

5. He Left Because Of The Signings Of Xisco And Ignacio Gonzalez

it has been said before, but Keegan once more reiterated that the reason he left Newcastle ultimately came down to the signings of Spanish flop Xisco, and the hardly-seen Nacho Gonzalez, who turned up on loan at St James Park without the manager’s input on the deals.
It was ultimately those two signings, as Keegan confirmed with his own words, that forced his hand to resignation, and his attempt to get Mike Ashley to restructure the management set-up as an ultimatum when Keegan was asked what would get him back to Newcastle. He admitted in the talk-in that he knew the players simply were not good enough – and with the benefit of hindsight, he was completely justified.

6. Newcastle Almost Signed Sami Hyypia

Keegan announced during his Q & A session that he had identified two targets that he wanted to sign during the summer transfer window in 2008 that ultimately ended with him leaving the club, and that the club fudged both attempted acquisitions.
The bigger of the two is somewhat known (and will be returned to shortly), but it is less well known that Keegan wanted to sign Sami Hyypia, who was at the tail-end of his Liverpool career, and was available for £1.25m. Having worked out the details of his contract demands – considerably less than the top earners at Newcastle according to Keegan – the manager went to the board and told them exactly what was needed to sign him.
But four hours later, Hyypia rang Keegan to confirm that the club had offered just £500k, and been turned down, telling Keegan that they had tried and failed.
Officially, Newcastle almost signed the imposing defender on three separate occasions, with the first coming in 1995 when the 22 year old turned up on Tyneside for a trial under Kevin Keegan, who passed on the Finn and sent him back to MyPa. The second time relates to the time Keegan referred to when he was at the club, and then at the end of the transfer window in February 2009, Joe Kinnear admitted they had had an offer rebuffed for the centre-half again.

[video=youtube;ENfD_z7yde8]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ENfD_z7yde8[/video]

TIP... bottom left of the screen... click the unmute button....

 

Ah, so now we have Charnley and it's all absolutely not Pardew's fault, we should be aiming for the skies in 2014 with this wondrous set-up.

Just seems to me that there's a lot of folks within football with neither the time nor the inclination to understand the route causes of our issues. Sadly KK's one of them. Too much emphasis seems to centre itself on the quality of players you can bring in, rather than the way you make the players play or the way you integrate with your reserves/youth setup.

 

I like Keegan but he's wrong about Pardew. He should be getting the best out of the players he has and he doesn't. The football is **** and he is a snivelling little swamp rat. Pardew should be swirling around a toilet bowl catching lumps of ****e from MA's arse with his tongue instead of 'managing us' and spouting off a load of rubbish since he's so full of ****.

 

While I completely agree with his point on Ashley, who has surrounded himself continuously with people with no football experience, and a lack of care for the club. But that's, unfortunately down entirely to Ashley! As a multi-billionaire, if he seriously wanted this club to succeed he would put people around him who can make that happen. He isn't soft!

I also agree, Pardew does have that **** eating tadpole kinda attitude.

 

Partly true but all managers will tell you they are a slave to the quality of the player they are working with. If you don't have the players then it doesn't matter what your "style" is. Martinez at Wigan being a case in point. It would be nice to develop a long term style which allows managers to simply be slotted in and out but very few clubs in world football actually operate this way. Dortmund and Barca. The rest change styles with each manager who comes through the door. I do think in an ideal world that the Dortmund and Barca models are better, but it is not an easy thing to achieve.

I'd like a change from Pardew but I must be honest, I look at our 25 for PL duty and think its very much a 9-13 type squad. I'd say there are 8 better squads being honest. A manager may be able to gain a place or two with his tactical nous, but not much more than that. Look at the correlation between wage bills and finishing positions in the PL. It is very much the clubs with high wage bills who populate the top positions. The odd club may manage to buck that trend now and again but not with any regularity. High wage bills - best players. Of course there are ones who go the other way on occasion too like QPR. High wage bills but relegated. That is just usually down to a mismanagement of funds though.

 

If Ashley wanted the club to succeed he would turn around and say - 'There's the money, go and get the results'. He'd surround himself with the very best football people and wouldn't have appointed a dog faced gremlin like Pardew in the first place.

 

That's ****ed up.

 

The man is a chancer and feeds very much from the bottom. A **** who needs to **** off down whatever hole he spawned from.

 

Well I for one can't help but being drawn to the fact that KK is a man of fairness. He didn't want to call Pardew, a fellow managerial compadre if you will, and also labelled his time with Ashley as 'ok'. KK preferred to blame the idiots that Ashley hired in for knacking the whole job. But re KK's point, if he had have been able to bring in Hypia and Modric instead of Xisco and Gonzalez, (the act of just bringing in two players) would we have had a relegation season?

I'm with you on the general absence of top football commentators who seem to minimise or just ignore what an unhappy and pessimistic bunch we are - and have been sold down the river most Januarys.

 

Not for me, no chance. Had Keegan stayed we would have been fine. Doubt it would have been 'messianic' to any degree but I suspect he'd have brought decent players out of Xisco and Gonzalez if he'd bothered to work with them...

 

Keegan leaving was the final nail in the coffin. For me, he shouldn't of left how he did. It was completely unprofessional... Some people I speak to are surprised he hasn't had a job since, but I for one am not surprised at all. When the going gets tough the tough get tougher, they don't tuck there tail and run for the hills. Legend for what he did, but he most definitely played his part in our relegation.

 

Very eloquently put.

 

The final nail? Nothing to do with his replacement Joe Kinnear? Nothing to do with Dennis Wise? Nothing to do with selling Milner, Given and N'Zogbia? Sound like you're apportioning a significant part of the blame of the fruition of Ashley's brilliance to KK. All he did, after putting up with a number of issues that he commented on recently, was stand up and say no, not good enough.

That's something Pardew, or any of the board won't do now - as they feel a complete tearing up of any fans hopes is the exact thing required. As the board suggested the other day - take our plans or go and do something else, as Newcastle fans mean nothing to the board.