How do you replace a manager like Kevin Keegan? That was the unenviable question posed to Newcastle's board when Keegan, gripped by inner torment after losing the title to Manchester United the previous season, dramatically quit in February 1997. The club's only had one candidate in mind in the immediate aftermath was Keegan's nemesis and the man that had sparked his infamous Id love it if we beat them TV rant after a victory at Leeds. Newcastle's Glaswegian chief executive Freddie Fletcher had caught wind that Ferguson was at loggerheads with Manchester United over a new contract a few months earlier and was prepared to make him the first manager in the Premier League to earn a £1 million-a-year salary if he agreed to succeed Keegan. Regrettably, it never came to pass as Ferguson leveraged our interest to force the Red Devils into offering him better terms and he stayed at Old Trafford for another 17 more trophy-laden years until retiring in 2013.
"When Keegan left we tried to get Ferguson to Newcastle as his replacement," Freddy Shepherd told theChronicle. "We had talks with his advisors at the time. We soon realised there was no way he was going to come to Newcastle."
It's doesn't even bear thinking about what Ferguson could have accomplished with a team containing Alan Shearer, Les Ferdinand and David Ginola et al.
One thing is for sure; we wouldn't be enduring a 45th painful year without a trophy.
