Keegan lost the plot - Curry

Last updated: 7th September 2008

Keegan lost the plot - Curry

Curry: heated debate

"If you asked the man on the street in London, Manchester or Birmingham about Kevin Keegan, they'll remember him as the man who quit on the toilet at Wembley.

Steve Curry
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He's no stranger to walking out on a job, still, it was strange to see 'King Kev' walk out on his beloved Newcastle this week.

While the entire Geordie population is up in arms about the treatment of their Messiah by the club's owner, Mike Ashley, the Daily Mail's Steve Curry thinks it is Keegan who had lost the plot.

Newspaper reports suggest that the former Magpies boss had demanded £200m to splash out on the likes of Frank Lampard, Ronaldinho, David Beckham and Thierry Henry during the August transfer window, while it was football director Dennis Wise who was charged with plotting the club's summer moves.

And Curry told Sunday Supplement that after a three-year sabbatical from the game, Keegan should not have expected to be given the power to buy and sell players at Newcastle.

Moreover, the journalist says Keegan should never have been given the job in the first place.

"I think he'd lost the plot when he walked out on England," Curry said.

"So I cannot understand why, to appease the fans at St James' Park, the club hired a guy who had not watched a football match for three years.

"He'd been involved in waiting tables at his failing Soccer Circus and had obviously lost interest in the game. There have been lots of stories about his finances and what he has lost in Glasgow, so you wonder what his motives were for coming back to St James' Park.

"If he's not been interested in football for three years, why would he want to come back and manage Newcastle again?"

Dreamer

Curry continued: "For him to say 'these are the players I want,' knowing full well he's got no chance of getting them, underlines the fact that the fella's a dreamer."

"The reality is, you can ask every man on the streets of Newcastle and they'd say 'yes, we want Kevin back.' But if you asked the man on the street in London, Manchester or Birmingham about Kevin Keegan, they'll remember him as the man who quit on the toilet at Wembley - and admitted that he wasn't good enough for the job."

Newcastle's deadline-day dealings prompted this resignation.

Keegan was reportedly told that Spanish striker Xisco and Uruguayan Ignacio Gonzalez were on their way, while Michael Owen could be on his way out.

And when the manager expressed his concerns - especially having never heard of either of the club's proposed signings - he was told to research them on the internet.

While Curry believes that managers should be in control when deciding which players to sign, he reckons Keegan was not equipped to do so.

Ludicrous

"I've got very little sympathy for Keegan," he said.

"I do believe that managers should select the players that the club is signing - and apparently when he was told about the players that were being brought he said he'd never heard of them and was told to go and look them up on YouTube! That is a ludicrous position to put a manager in.

"But, there are two sides to every story.

"There was an ongoing dialogue between Keegan and the board to see if they could thrash out a system whereby he could continue working there - he failed to attend the meeting.

"They were in negotiations and he walked away from those negotiations. Keegan was in a position where he could go and see if he could reach a situation where he and Wise, or he and any director of football could work together and he failed to attend one of the meetings.

"The bottom line is Kevin Keegan is an employee - and if Mike Ashley wants to sell Michael Owen he's perfectly entitled to."

Curry added: "Keegan has been living on the credit in the bank from his previous times at Newcastle and really he should not have been there in the first place."

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