Another mad week on Tyneside - only Geordies can whip up this kind of excitement and fanaticism with the surprise return of their King Kev.

But if you were to read between the lines at the start of the week, certainly after Harry Redknapp turned the job down, Mike Ashley had to give the supporters something to lift them.

And there were two major candidates for that in the Toon Army's eyes: Alan Shearer, Kevin Keegan, or both.

When the club were saying they wanted someone with experience that pretty much ruled out Shearer and then left the way clear for Kevin to come back in.

So in that respect I wasn't surprised that they went for Kevin as that's what the fans wanted, but giving the fans what they want isn't always the best thing.

A lot has been said and written about Keegan having to adjust to life back in the big time, but I don't agree that he is 'yesterday's man' - the lad's 56, he's still a young man!


He's only been out the game three years and the Premier League hasn't changed as much in that time as some make out.

Difficult

In saying that, the job description that he's got at Newcastle is different to when he took charge for the first time and I just think that he's going to find it much more difficult than he did last time around.

He had nothing to lose when he took charge in 1992 as the team were rock-bottom and looked like they were going to be relegated from the old second division.

But he got the wheels in motion, got them on a roll, they survived the drop and were promoted to the Premier League the following season.

As we saw with Roy Keane at Sunderland last season, you can do that if you get the right bandwagon rolling. But what Kevin did was keep that going when he got Newcastle back to the top flight.

So from that respect, he hasn't got as much to do in terms of turning things around as Newcastle are in the top half of the Premier League.

But the fans want success so he will have to hit the ground running. It's a lot more difficult to get players in and make a team click in the Premier League than it is in the second tier.

He is inheriting a decent squad, with players like Michael Owen, Shay Given, Damien Duff, James Milner, there's a lot of good players at the club, but they've had good players for a while and they haven't been able to prosper and be successful.

But Kevin will go in there and give them a different mind-frame. He'll be positive and up-beat and will try to get them playing with a freedom that they haven't been playing with.

Whether that's going to be good enough, plus whoever Kevin brings in of course, to turn it round we'll have to wait and see.

I hope he does well - I really do - because he's good for the game.

But we've seen him walk away from England and from Fulham. He didn't make it at Man City at all, so there are some doubts there. All in all, it is a gamble - but when you bring any manager in it's a gamble.

Rant



The Premier League has missed Keegan. Certainly when he was at Newcastle he was great for the game with his battles with Fergie and the mind games that were going on there which culminated in Kevin's famous 'I'd love it if we beat them. Love it!' outburst on Sky Sports.

Andy Gray conducted that interview from the studio with Richard Keys and both were taken totally by surprise by his reaction.

Andy Gray had asked him a couple of questions about the game and he was quite happy to answer them.

As Richard started to develop the interview a bit more he just seemed to be getting more tense and it was almost as if Richard sussed out that Kevin certainly had something he wanted to get off his chest.

Keysie kept probing away and eventually Kevin let rip and it has now become legendary!

The Kevin rant and the Big Ron rant are the ones that people remember and talk about all the time.

Whether he can take Newcastle back to that level again I don't know, but make no mistake about it, that will be his intention.

Nobody knows the Toon Army better than Kevin and I'm not so sure about the popular notion that the fans just want exciting football and don't care about winning anything - I would be amazed if that was the case.

He's a hero, a Newcastle legend - Special K. He can do no wrong and I would hate Kevin's reputation on Tyneside to be tarnished by failure. But he'll give it his best shot and if he can get it going I'll be delighted.

Even if he fails trying 100 per cent to give the fans what they want, I think they will forgive him for that.

After all, he is King Kev.