Kevin Keegan promises to deliver success

From Times Online

January 17, 2008

Times Online and Agencies

Kevin Keegan has promised to bring success back to Newcastle United while also producing the kind of exciting football that the club's supporters demand.

The new manager asked fans to give him time as he spoke today for the first time about the challenge ahead, but admitted he was relishing the prospect of turning the club around.

"I know what the fans want and I know what they don't want as well," he said. "As long as they are realistic and patient I think we can try again to help them have dreams and possibly win something."

Keegan, 56, made a stunning return to St James' Park last night 11 years after he quit the club as manager. He replaces Sam Allardyce with the side 12th in the Premier League and playing an unpopular style of efficiency-first football.

His appointment gave the club and its supporters an instant lift, with the remaining tickets for last night's FA Cup replay at home to Stoke City quickly selling out and the players responding with an inspired 4-1 victory.

One of his first tasks will be to repair his relationship with Michael Owen, the Newcastle and England forward who wrote a stinging criticism of Keegan in his autobiography. Alan Shearer insisted today the pair will put their differences behind them.

"I have gone on record as saying any I think any centre forward playing under Kevin Keegan will, dare I use the words, 'love it'," the former Newcastle forward said. "He wants to attack and play with two wingers and get balls into the box.

"If that is the case Michael Owen will certainly enjoy playing under him. He will score goals. They are grown adults and will get over that. I think that is in the past and the two men will look to the future."

Owen played for Keegan during his time in charge of the national team from 1999 to 2000 and felt poorly treated during the finals of the 2000 European Championships.

"I used to go into games feeling believing that the opposition was scared of me and feeling nothing could get in my way," he wrote. "That feeling, that belief, evaporated at times when I played under Keegan.

"I don't think Keegan had any personal agenda against me. I just think that as England manager at a major tournament he felt under enormous pressure and he needed something or someone to blame. I was an easy target. I wasn't on top of my game."