Exile helped Kevin change fortunes

Apr 30 2008 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

KEVIN Keegan believes his self-enforced exile from football helped him turn things around at Newcastle United because it meant he had to focus his attention on the players he inherited from Sam Allardyce.

When Keegan made his shock return to St James’s Park three months ago, one of the main arguments from those who opposed his appointment was his lengthy absence from day-to-day management.

By his own admission, Keegan had hardly watched any football since he walked away from the manager’s chair at Manchester City in March 2005 and critics suggested he was completely out of touch with the modern Premier League.

Interestingly, Keegan would not necessarily disagree with them, but he believes the time away from the game has been a help rather than a hindrance as it meant he did not want to make wholesale changes to his squad in January because he did not have any targets in mind.

He explained: “What I didn’t know was what players I had today. I knew the names, but not what character they’d got and I knew all the top teams, but it was the other ones we were going to be playing.

“I didn’t know all the players, I’ll be honest with you and I was honest enough to say that at the time. I hadn’t watched a live game for three years. To me, that’s not necessarily a big deal.

“I don’t think Arsene Wenger goes to watch the opposition and I’d watched a lot of games on television. I know now, having been here three months, that half the targets I’d like are the same people I’d have liked when I was out of the game, looking at them and thinking ‘wow, if I was a manager now, that’s the sort of player you’d like at your club’.

“It’s not as big a thing as the media made it out to be. And then, when things weren’t going well, they exaggerated it. But in reality, in some ways, it focused me on what we had here, what we had to work with.

“The transfer deadline passed without me signing a player, whilst I would like to have fetched Jonathan Woodgate in and that’s well documented, I wasn’t looking to fetch four or five in and say I needed to change everything. I was looking forward to working with the players here. And that’s what we did.”

Although Keegan was not entirely sure what sort of squad he was trying to rejuvenate when he returned to Newcastle after an 11-year absence, he knew everything he needed to know about the club and what is required to make it tick.

And it is that insider knowledge which, Keegan believes, has enabled him to turn things around this season as he has hauled the Magpies back into the relative comfort of mid-table on the back of a run of seven games without defeat. “I told the owner (Mike Ashley), if I took the job here, I knew what this club wanted, I knew what was required,” he added. “When I went to Fulham, I couldn’t say that: I didn’t know Fulham, I just knew it had a ground on the side of the Thames and that Johnny Haynes had played there and Jimmy Hill. I didn’t know anything about it.

“But this club, I did. I wasn’t coming in cold. I’d played for it, I’d managed it before. I’d played here when it was quite successful and the only thing we could do was get out of the division below and we did that. And I’d managed it and we went from the division below and could and probably should have won the Premier League. Those things, I knew.”

Meanwhile, Obafemi Martins’ goal against West Ham last weekend means he has become only the fifth United player in the history of the Premier League to reach double figures in two successive seasons.

The Nigerian international has scored 10 goals in 32 games this season to go with the 17 he scored in his first season on Tyneside. Andy Cole, Peter Beardsley, Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer are the only other Newcastle players to have matched that record since the club returned to the top flight in 1993.