Newcastle United great Kevin Keegan confessed that Sir Alex Ferguson’s comments had affected him, but Roy Keane praised the former Magpies manager for not being a robot.
Roy Keane has admitted that he ‘admires’ Kevin Keegan, after the Manchester United icon dismissed claims that Newcastle United lost the title in 1996 due to his ’emot
ional’ outburst.
Keegan famously proclaimed live on air that ‘I will adore it if we defeat them’ after his side’s 1-0 victory against Leeds United with two games left in the season. Keegan freely revealed that ‘it really has got to me’ on a night when the Newcastle manager retaliated at rival Sir Alex Ferguson, who ‘fell down in my estimations’.
Sir Alex had already stated that Leeds were ‘cheating’ their manager by elevating their game against Manchester United earlier that month, and hissed ‘you wait and see the difference’ when they faced Newcastle. Keegan was also outraged by allegations that Newcastle’s penultimate game of the season against Nottingham Forest could be impacted by the club’s decision to play Stuart Pearce’s testimonial at the City Ground less than a week later.
In the most recent episode of the Stick to Football podcast, Les Ferdinand discussed Keegan’s ‘heart on his sleeve’ and how outsiders regarded this as a ‘weakness’ for a manager. Ferdinand claimed’most people’ perceived the interview as Sir Alex ‘winning the mind games’, but the Newcastle legend said no one in the locker room thought ‘he’d lost it’. Keane, for one, did not feel this way, given that Manchester United were already three points ahead at the time after overcoming a massive advantage earlier in the season.
“We had that experience and belief,” he went on to say. “Not from the interview, far from it; only from a few outcomes. You can see them slipping up in certain games, and we won [at St James’ Park], but I would never criticise Kevin Keegan. I admire him not only for that, but because he is an emotional person. He is not a robot.
“Do you think they lost it because of an interview? They probably slipped up right before that. The damage was done. I go back to momentum, and we always believed we could track down a squad.”
