Creation of so-called dream team is just Shear lunacy

THE words came from Alan Shearer’s own lips and were as revealing as they were honest.

“He (Keegan) is his own man. As I said, I have got tremendous respect for him.

“But if he was to ring me, then of course I would speak to him because I have great respect for him.

“What he will bring is tremendous enthusiasm, great commitment, and I think he will just bring a spark to the area.

“He knows the football club, he knows the people, he knows what they want and he knows that they want a style of play there, they want to be entertained.

‘‘I don’t know whether Kevin wants me as his number two, and I don’t know whether I want to be a number two.

“I haven’t really seen myself as a number two,” he said.

Newcastle do not need to listen to any more.

Shearer is the club’s record goal-scorer. He is as near as it comes to a living legend on Tyneside. He is eloquent and intelligent with a sharp football brain and a spine of steel which is a pre-requisite for a successful football manager.

But Shearer is not the man to stand shoulder to shoulder with Kevin Keegan for the next three and a half years.

Not if billionaire owner Mike Ashley has a fighting chance of bringing harmony as well as passion and pride to St James’ Park.

Keegan is not the sort of man to take counsel. He does things by instinct. Off the cuff.

Call him maverick or cavalier. That is his strength.

Take a look at his assistants in the past. Arthur Cox and Derek Fazackerly. Talented but quiet men who shunned the limelight and were content to do their coaching unheralded.

The one time Keegan teamed up with a big name, Ray Wilkins at Fulham, it ended in acrimony and bitterness.

Pitching together two strong personalities with big egos rarely works whether it be big business, politics, show-business or sport.

The charismatic Eric Morecambe needed his steady Ernie Wise, Stan Laurel his Oliver Hardy and former Manchester City showman Malcolm Allison his Joe Mercer.

True, you might argue that Tony Blair and Gordon Brown did their separate jobs well enough but it was always a fractious relationship, amarriage of mutual inconvenience.

So it would prove with Keegan and Shearer, two huge footballing magnets with great powers of attraction but whose north-east-seeking poles would ultimately fight against each other.

After all, they are not exactly bosom companions. By Shearer’s own admission they have barely spoken since Keegan left St James’ Park in January 1997 while, pointedly, Keegan played no part in Shearer’s testimonial events in 2006.

The fans, no doubt, will continue to dream about their ‘dream team’, but the fact is that part of the attraction of Keegan’s appointment was that he was just about the only candidate who did not face having to operate in the shadow Shearer casts on Tyneside.

It is only natural that Shearer, the son of a Geordie sheet metal worker if you haven’t heard, wants to “help in any way possible”.

But Ashley needs to apply some logic to the madness he has created.

Much better for Newcastle and Shearer if the coronation of their most celebrated striker comes at the end of Keegan’s latest reign, however long that might last.

Let the Geordie fans dream, but forget the so-called ‘dream team’.