10 Exceptional Players Newcastle United Should Never Have Turned Down

7. Peter Beardsley

It's a well-known fact that Peter Beardsley's home coming to Newcastle under Kevin Keegan was the catalyst for the formation of the Entertainers team. He was instrumental alongside Andy Cole in the pair's first season together, and it was his creative vision and attacking ability that formed the hub of Newcastle's best play under Keegan. But that wasn't the first time Newcastle had welcomed Beardsley back to the club, as his signature in 1983 righted an unthinkable wrong that had happened when the England star was still a teenager. Somehow, when he was a teenager in the youth set-up at Newcastle, Beardsley had been released in 1978 from a trial and instead joined Carlisle, who he helped up to the Second Division before moving to Vancouver Whitecaps, where he scored 20 goals in 48 appearances. From there, he went to Man Utd, who ignored his talents in another show of spectacular wrongness and back to Vancouver before Newcastle finally got their act together, 4 years after letting him slip away first time, and signed him up for £150,000 more than they could have initially had him. For that four year period, Newcastle wasted away in the Second Division when they could have been lead up to the First by the prodigious Beardsley.