I have no problem with Wise – Keegan

Jan 30 2008 The Journal

KEVIN Keegan has insisted he sees the arrival of Dennis Wise as a positive thing for the future of the club after watching his Newcastle side crash to a second successive 3-0 defeat at Arsenal last night.

Rumours have been rife that the appointment of Wise as executive director has been done without the consent of Keegan and that the issue could quickly become a major source of contention behind the scenes at St James’s Park.

But having initially seemed reluctant to talk about Wise’s arrival, a stance which fuelled the belief he was less than happy with the decision to add him to the management team, Keegan’s was as frank as possible last night.

“People are entitled to write what they want but, from my point of view, I see it as a positive thing,” said Keegan, who has failed to win any of his three games in charge since he returned to Newcastle after an 11-year absence. “As long as I can get on with my job, and I get all the help I need – and that’s the way it’s been put to me – you would be a fool to say, ‘Well, I don’t want that’.

“I knew he was one of the two or three names put forward, so it would be wrong to suggest anything other than I knew about what was going to happen. That was in place before I came to the club. It would have happened no matter who took this job. There’s been no deception or anything, it’s been very open. I’m fine. I pretty much know from conversations we had what Dennis is going to do, and the idea in principle is very good – to go and look for young players and bring a lot of youngsters in to shore up what we haven’t got enough of in our Academy. It’s really for my benefit.

“I’m all for the changes. It’s not a problem, I approve of them. We had this discussion when I took the job. I didn’t know who would be the director, but they want someone on the board who understands football.”

He continued: “Whatever people want to write about Dennis Wise, he does understand football. I know Dennis and I think it will work very well. But time will tell.”

Keegan also stressed that Wise will report to him, as well as chairman Chris Mort, but it is clear both men have taken on a major challenge in trying to revive the club. The Magpies have not won since December 15 and have not scored in four successive games against Premier League

opposition. Significantly, they never really looked capable of ending that poor run against the Gunners last night.

“It’s a little bit like Groundhog Day. It’s a tough place to come, but if you got points for being genuine, I think we had a genuine bunch of players here tonight who gave it everything they had,” added Keegan, who also saw his team lose 3-0 to Arsenal in the FA Cup last weekend.

“We didn’t quite have enough quality at times, but that’s something I think the players have got, it just didn’t come up tonight. You don’t have to play Arsenal twice every week, and that’s probably a good thing. They’ve got the confidence we lack at the moment as they’ve had the results we haven’t.

“We will create more chances with the players we’ve got, there’s absolutely no doubt about that. But at the moment we’re not creating enough chances in the game. If I was playing up front, I’d probably be more vociferous than most. I played there, and the only way you score goals is if people around you create chances. We didn’t create too much tonight and that’s pretty obvious. We probably got our three best chances late on when the game was over.

“People with common sense, and most of our fans, have patience. They know it’s not going to happen overnight. We didn’t say it just so if we did well people thought, ‘That’s fantastic’, we said it because football has never been any different. Things take time.

“Sometimes a new manager coming in does give a team a quick uplift and a surge, but that didn’t happen with us. Bolton at home was probably our best chance, but we didn’t play particularly well and got what we deserved, 0-0. Two games at Arsenal were always going to be tough. We could have come and played a lot better and still got beat. I think 3-0 was a bit harsh.”

Keegan, though, will have to make the best of what he has got after admitting it is unlikely he will be able to bring any new faces in before the close of the transfer window tomorrow. United made an enquiry about Derby midfielder Giles Barnes, but that does not look as though it will lead anywhere.

Keegan added: “I don’t think it’ll happen. If we’d got two players in, which was the original intention, someone like him would have been perfect to slide in as one for the future. I don’t think we’ll do it in this transfer window, but we might do three or four of those type of signings in the summer. That’s what this new set-up is all about.”