Player search goes global for Keegan

Apr 26 2008 by Mark Douglas, The Journal

KEVIN Keegan admits Newcastle United will not be able to compete with the prestige of the Premier League’s ‘Big Four’ in the transfer market this summer, but he believes that outside that top flight elite no other club will be as attractive to potential players.

In the week in which they attempted to steal a march on a host of top European clubs by meeting £20m-rated Croatia midfielder Luka Modric, Keegan has moved to douse some of the hype building around his summer recruitment drive.

The United manager revealed he has already swapped a list of transfer targets with director of football Dennis Wise and vice-president Tony Jimenez, and the United manager will run the rule over two of the foreign-based targets when Newcastle have their free weekend ahead of the visit of Chelsea on Bank Holiday Monday.

After being impressed by the calibre of his current squad since they began to turn things around, Keegan is targeting four ‘top-notch’ players and is limiting his search to recruits with Premier League experience who are capable of slotting straight into the side.

He is unlikely to sign South American players, having had his fingers burned by signing Argentinian striker Matias Vuoso when he was manager of Manchester City, but the search is definitely a global one for United.

Below that chase for top-level players, he will look to make ‘two or three’ more risky signings for less money, whose impact he will be less certain of but who will not stretch his budget too much.

It is a fine balancing act for the United hierarchy, and Keegan is realistic about the lure of his club. But at the same time as being resigned to losing out to the big four, he feels that there will still be enough big names out there to improve his squad.

“No, I’m not confident. No, if Liverpool or Chelsea came in (for the same transfer target), I would not be confident because they can offer more than we can in terms of Champions League, top four is almost guaranteed to these clubs. But they can not collect all the pebbles on the beach,” he said.

“So what can you offer? Well, to some of these players who come over, regular first-team football.

“We can offer more than most. If Chelsea come in, we will not get them, if Man United come in and probably if Liverpool and Arsenal come in, if I am honest, probably we won’t get that player. But after that I would back us against anyone. We can compete but we have to be sensible and have realistic targets.

“There are only so many clubs and, after you take away those top-10 clubs around the world, we are in there with everyone else.”

The summer months will be the litmus test for Keegan’s working relationship with Wise, Jimenez and technical co-ordinator Jeff Vetere – but so far the United boss has been impressed.

“It’s worked very well so far,” he said. “Dennis and I talk a lot, he comes up a lot. Tony will only be involved on the financial side, so he doesn’t have to be up here, but he has a key part in it. We had a meeting two weeks ago, we (Keegan, Arthur Cox and Terry McDermott) took our list in and they put theirs down.”

Dinamo Zagreb midfielder Modric is one name on both Wise and Keegan’s list, and while a delegation from United did meet the 22-year-old this week, mention of his name was met with a less than overwhelming response from the Newcastle manager.

The initial meeting was clearly an opening shot in what promises to be a long and gruelling pursuit of one of Europe’s most highly-coveted young players, and Keegan playing down the link appears to be a calculated move not to raise supporters’ expectations too high. But if his response to the Modric link was underwhelming, his dismissal of a mischievous link with Barcelona striker Thierry Henry was swift and decisive.

“It’s fantasy football. Back to reality, the only time we will really be able to say what we are doing is when we fetch people in,” he said. “The Henry story, I went to a talk-in and a 10-year-old kid asked me, ‘If you could fetch one player to Newcastle United, who would it be?’, and I said Thierry Henry.”

On the subject of Modric, he said: “If you are looking at a young midfield player who has got a fantastic future ahead of him, Modric is one of them. But every other club in the league would like Modric.”