Keegan Aint Going To Hearts Then!

Well, as we all suspected, Kevin Keegan will NOT be the new manager of Hearts!

A rumour linking this footballing legend with our club had been doing the rounds a week or so ago, but I think that most of us are used to this sort of speculation surrounding Hearts ending one way these days i.e. it never happens!

We had an interesting spectrum of different opinions on Keegan posted here last week, ranging from those who wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole to those who would be delighted to have seen someone of his profile at our club. I would definitely have been in the latter camp, as for whatever faults he has I just think that the acquisition of such a genuine football person like Keegan would have given Hearts a massive lift, not to mention lifting our profile to a perhaps unprecedented level.

Kevin Keegan is a seriously major character isn’t he? You won’t find many people who are interested in football who don’t have an opinion on him one way or the other. In fact, even those with little more than a passing interest in the sport tend to know a fair bit about him. I keep hearing about the many flaws that he has as a manager from various quarters, and it’s certainly true that the guy is far from perfect in this role. But there must be something about Keegan that keeps people interested in employing him, and I think a lot of that has to do with the raw charisma that he has. Everywhere he’s gone he’s been, temporarily at least, received like some sort of Messiah – yes, even when he got the perennial poisoned chalice that is the England job! There was a short spell where the English public all seemed to buy into Keegan-mania, even though they probably all knew deep down that their manager was not the most tactically astute in the world, and that their defence would never be the tightest. To have even temporarily tamed the infamously vicious English media gives you an idea of the charm that this guy possesses, and to this day he is still very popular with most of the Press. And given yesterday’s shock announcement that he is to return to Newcastle as manager, it just goes to show how highly he continues to be thought of in footballing circles as well.

How will Keegan fare in his second spell as Newcastle United manager? Who knows. It’s certainly changed days since his last term there in the mid ’90s, where he breathed new life into a club that had threatened to disappear completely from the English football map. He turned that club around completely and at one stage had them seen as the most popular club in the land – anyone who wasn’t a Magpies fan still liked them (well, maybe not those from Sunderland!) because of the refreshingly open style of play that they adopted, and even now it’s still easy to picture some of the fantastic football that this side played.

Keegan is often criticised by some for the way that his team blew a great chance to win the Premiership back then, but even though it’s true that they did have a commanding lead at one stage, and that perhaps a manager with a less gung-ho approach may have been able to steer them over the line in the end, it just wouldn’t have been the same Newcastle if that had been the case. They were who they were because of the fact that they played in this way, which was always going to leave them vulnerable at one stage or another. I also believe that Manchester United, the team that eventually overtook them the year that they had a 13 point lead (I think it was 13 anyway – something like that), were never given the credit that they deserved for what was a phenomenal run-in for them. That was when Eric Cantona was at the absolute peak of his powers, and given that United were THE team back then (not that they’re any slouches these days either), I do think that some of the stick that Keegan and his players got for not winning the league that year was a bit harsh. And let’s face it, if his team HAD won the league, we would probably never have witnessed THAT interview on SKY when Keegan completely lost the plot – absolutely essential viewing that would surely have granted him legendary status regardless of anything else he had done in his career!

This time around things could be extremely difficult for Keegan at Newcastle, but he does seem to have a special kinship with that club and perhaps he is the man to help them out of the doldrums they find themselves in just now. Whatever happens I’d like to wish Kevin Keegan all the best on his return to the North-East. One of football’s genuine characters is back in the game, and we can surely never have too many of those.