Shearer the spin doctor

Newcastle United and Blackburn Rovers legend Alan Shearer has revealed that he turned down Manchester United to sign for Blackburn Rovers because the Red Devils needed “three or four weeks” to get the money together.

Shearer left Southampton in 1992 for a fee in the region of £3.6 million establishing himself as an Ewood Park legend and a regular England international. Shearer also won a Premier League medal in 1995, his only silverware of note from his illustrious career.

Despite success at Ewood Park Shearer has told FourFourTwo Magazine why he didn’t join Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United. According to the Toon legend the Red Devils board didn’t have enough money to push the transfer through when he was looking to leave.

“There was interest from Manchester United, but I was told I would have to wait three of four weeks for them to get the money together.” Shearer explained to FourFourTwo Magazine.

“I felt if they really wanted me then they would come and get me immediately. I had already spoken to Blackburn abd had told Kenny Dalglish, Ray Harford, and Jack Walker that I would give them an answer in three or four days – and my answer was yes.”

Surely a case of Shearer spinning to justify to himself the bad decision to go to Ewood instead of OT.

http://www.sport.co.uk/news/Football/50164/Shearer_Fergie_didnt_have_the_cash_to_sign_me.aspx

Thoughts?

 

What a load of **** as if we wouldn't be able to get together 3 mill

 

Jordan agreed. Shearer must be desperately attempting to justify not joining Man Utd. Imagine how the medals he missed out on to join Blackburn and later NUFC.

 

Alan Shearer is the ultimate geordie WUM

 

To be fair, in 1992 we were still struggling with the move to the plc structure, and the fact that football finances were tight back then. Most football clubs were dependent either on rich backers or on the money from gate receipts, which only came in gradually. It wasn't until the Prem was started in 1992-93 that we started seeing lots of free cash flow in every season from TV rights and commerical revenue. So it's conceivable that in 1992 Blackburn could have laid their hands on that much in cash much quicker than us, particularly cos we'd have needed full board approval to throw that kind of money around. Heck, we only managed to get Roy Keane ahead of Blackburn in 1993 at the last minute cos of the need to go through all the governance bollox.

Just goes to show three things:

1. The WUMs who think we bought all our early success are wrong - we regularly missed out on players in the early years and still succeeded
2. The Glazers may have loaded us with debt, but at least they've gotten rid of the whole shareholder/plc handcuffs
3. Shearer should have waited another three or four weeks, just like Keano did