Kev’s tales of the good old days at St James’ Park
KEEGAN DELIGHTS FANS ON RETURN TO TYNESIDE
KEVIN Keegan brought the house down at the Sage last night as Newcastle United fans flocked across the Tyne to hear him regale them with stories of better days on Tyneside.
Back then the club went out of their way to sign stars like Tino Asprilla, David Ginola, Les Ferdinand, Peter Beardsley and Alan Shearer.
Keegan had fans hanging on his every word as he promoted his new book My Life in Football as awardwinning independent bookshop The Forum took one of their book launches to the Sage in Gateshead.
Fans queued in their hundreds to collect their copy from the Forum’s stall before Keegan took the stage to a rapturous standing ovation, with one audience member shouting out: “We still love you Kevin!” With current United owner Mike Ashley admitting publicly that he “can’t and will not” compete with the big boys for transfers, Keegan spoke of the days when the club had no fear of bringing in the best players on the planet.
He said: “Douglas Hall wanted me to go to Juventus with him to sign Roberto Baggio. He said he was going to knock on the door and say he wanted to sign Baggio.
“I said I think I will give it a miss. “You’ll need to find somebody stupid to go with you so he took Terry McDermott. “Terry came back and said, ‘Can you believe it, we went to the Juventus offices to sign Baggio and they left us sitting there for two hours.’
“I think they fetched a Baggio shirt back.”
And when talking about Asprilla’s debut – at Middlesbrough – when the Colombian entered the pitch to change the game in the Tees-Tyne derby, Keegan said: “We signed him and he sat and had the team meal, with a couple of glasses of red wine.
“I wanted to just have him on the bench just to show what a great squad we had.
“We asked him to and he said no problem.
“But we were losing and I looked down and decided to throw him on.”
Aspr illa then performed a breathtaking Cryuff turn and laid on the equaliser for Steve Watson before Ferdinand got the winner.
Keegan also spoke of some tougher times on Tyneside though,