‘Tripps will excel at United and the fans will love him’
THERE is already a cup of tea waiting for Kieran Trippier at Nancy White’s home in Hebburn.
Nancy just so happens to be the grandmother of former Newcastle United defender David Edgar, who remains close with Tripper despite the pair being thousands of miles apart.
Trippier and Edgar played together at Burnley under one Eddie Howe and went on to win promotion to the Premier League in 2014.
Edgar, who is now back home in Canada, was on the phone to Trippier on Tuesday, ahead of his move to Newcastle United going through, and the former Magpies’ defender can’t wait to see his friend represent his boyhood club.
“It’s pretty special,” Edgar told the Chronicle. “Trips knows what that club meant to me. We always talked about it.
“I’m sure we had a cheeky drive up on a Tuesday night just to show him what it was like when we were younger. He tasted Newcastle, for sure, more than a few times!
“But I know he will excel there. I know the reception the fans will give him because of what he has gone and done. He’s the type of player that will wear his heart on his sleeve for that strip.”
The Chronicle previously revealed that Trippier is leaving Atletico with a ‘heavy heart’ but, having felt that he had achieved what he set out to do in Madrid, the 31-year-old is ‘excited’ to become the first signing of this new era.
While Trippier is attracted by the wages on offer, and the chance to bring his family back to the north of England, the right-back has also been struck by Newcastle’s ambition to one day compete.
It was a no-brainer of a deal for Newcastle. As well as giving the Magpies a new dimension with his crossing and set-piece delivery, Tripper is a vocal, experienced leader with a winning mentality.
Howe is acutely aware of the importance of signing the right sort of characters and, according to Steve Musgrove, the analyst who worked with Trippier at Spurs, the England international will ‘fit into a group that are very open and easy to chat to’.
“Kieran would come over and say hello to staff members and come into our office when we were there and you would see him around the training ground, in the canteen and on away trips,” Musgrove said.
“Some players you’d see in the corridor and they’d go past you and wouldn’t look up from their phone, but he would always say, ‘Hey. How’s it going? How’s your day?’
“You’d chat about other matches, games that were on the night before maybe. He was just a very down to earth guy.
“He was very approachable for staff and easy to get on with for other players and, from a management point of view, was great to work with.”
Speak to figures from Trippier’s formative years and they will tell you they have been invited to his wedding, sent signed shirts and FaceTimed while the England international celebrated Atletico Madrid’s title win last season.
Trippier even personally offered to sort tickets for an Atletico game for Lee Garcka, when he learned that his former PE teacher was going to be in Madrid.
Many years have passed since Trippier attended Woodhey High School, but the Bury native was keen to pay his old school a visit just two weeks after opening the scoring for the Three Lions in the World Cup semi-final against Croatia back in 2018.
Although the kids already knew all about Trippier, who remains the school’s 400-metre record holder to this day, Garcka quickly realised that the visit had a lasting effect on them.
“As teachers, we knew he would be coming in but we didn’t want to tell the kids just in case anything went wrong,” Garcka told the Chronicle.
“We’ve still got a video of when he walked through the school in the middle of lunchtime and all the kids were just going crazy.
“That was a real highlight moment because it demonstrated to the kids that they see his face and they see his picture up at school but, actually, he came back.
“I remember so many of the parents getting back to us saying, ‘You can’t believe how inspirational this is for the kids to see it.’”
However, Trippier would be the first to admit that he has not always been a modern day role model.
Indeed, when Howe last worked with Trippier, the former Burnley boss sat the right-back down and told him he needed to change his off-the-field habits.
Sean Dyche had similar discussions with Trippier when he took charge of Burnley and once scolded the right-back for going on a trip to