Robson glad Shearer returned home

Just how Alan Shearer ended up at Southampton remains a mystery to Sir Bobby Robson.

The Newcastle boss will send his talismanic skipper into battle on the south coast tomorrow hoping Shearer will take out his Champions League frustration on the club which lured him away from his native north-east as a teenager.

Shearer’s barnstorming season was rudely interrupted in midweek when suspension ruled him out of his side’s delayed European showdown with Barcelona in Spain.

But he will be back with a vengeance at St Mary’s Stadium and desperate to add to the 12 goals he has plundered to date during the current campaign.

United chairman Freddy Shepherd recently proposed the view that the 32-year-old striker is the greatest player ever to pull on the black-and-white jersey, and although fellow life-long supporter Robson has seen a few men worthy of holding that title, he is not about to disagree with his employer.

“Better than my mate (Albert) Stubbins?” said Robson with a smile. “(Peter) Beardsley, (Jackie) Milburn, Stubbins, (Hughie) Gallacher? I don’t know.

“I never saw Gallacher, but I saw Albert, I saw Jackie and I saw Malcolm (Macdonald) – I brought Malcolm into the professional game.

“I can’t say, but Shearer’s just a colossal player, he’s just been a fantastic English centre-forward. How he left here and went to Southampton, I’ll never know, but he did.

“But he’s returned home and he’s been a fantastic buy. What a buy, to bring him home at the right time, and I think it’s just been wonderful to have him back in a black-and-white shirt.

“The chairman said he’s the greatest? Well, don’t fight the chairman.”

Shearer’s 82nd-minute goal at Aston Villa last week was enough to give his side all three points and just their second away win in the league this season.

And he will be desperate to contribute in the same fashion again this weekend in a city he knows well, but where his current club have not won since February 1972.

Successive generations of Magpies have suffered horribly on the longest of journeys over the years and Kieron Dyer will need no reminder of how painful the trip can be.

The England midfielder’s World Cup finals dream was thrown into doubt at St Mary’s on the final day of last season when he was floored by a horror tackle from Tahar El Khalej and left with knee ligament damage in addition to the bitter taste of a 3-1 defeat.

The 23-year-old remarkably recovered in time to make the trip to the Far East, but by his own admission, was nowhere near his best as his eagerness to prove his fitness backfired.

Robson, so keen to ensure that the European adventure which has now been put on ice until February is not a one-off, will now turn his attention back to the Barclaycard Premiership and the fight to repeat last season’s top-four finish.

Shearer and Craig Bellamy, who also missed out at the Nou Camp through suspension, are likely to return, and that is tough luck for 21-year-old Shola Ameobi, who was outstanding in Barcelona and returned with the reward of his first ever Champions League goal.