Keegan and NUFC: an insider told me...
The media has been going faintly mental today over a story in which, it seems to me, we don't know a single thing.
Depending on who you believe, Kevin Keegan has either resigned as Newcastle United manager or he's been sacked. Or, quite possibly, he hasn't.
Rumours have been circulating on Tyneside about Keegan all day but as I write this at 5.04pm, the club has said nothing and neither has he. In short, we don't know - for definite, that is - anything.
On our website, we have reported the very little that we know: that there are tons of rumours flying about and the fans are rallying in support of Keegan. But we've just held our afternoon news conference and tried to plan tomorrow's paper and had to admit that it's pretty hard when you don't know what the story is.
That hasn't stopped other people, and the 24-hour TV news channels in particular have been running the story since midday and getting comments from all and sundry on Keegan's departure when they still can't be sure that it's happened. Former footballers and newspaper reporters who should know better have been queueing up to comment on something that quite possibly might not have happened.
These are the times when "sources" and "insiders" seem to come out of the woodwork and start telling Sky and News 24 pretty much everything except their names. Don't let on, but a neighbour of my cousin's boyfriend's window cleaner works at St James's Park and he reckons that Alan Shearer was seen out with Mike Ashley have a pizza last night and it looked like he was signing a contract (I completely made that up, by the way).
According to the BBC, "manager Kevin Keegan has left Newcastle United after only eight months in charge" - only it then adds the crucial words: "BBC Sport understands". In other words, if they're wrong, they can just say that someone told them and they reported it in good faith. (The BBC was also saying at one point that Newcastle had picked up "just four points from their opening three games" which I would have thought was quite a good return when we've had to play away against Arsenal and Manchester United - talk about creating a crisis!)
There's only one thing for sure in this story: in PR terms, Newcastle United have done themselves no favours by saying nothing all day and I can only hope that the silence is due to someone trying to get Keegan back.
Postscript: as I was driving to the gym at 6.45pm, BBC Radio Five Live was discussing Keegan's departure with the football writer of a North East morning newspaper that is not The Journal. Five mintues later, another presenter had to interrupt the next item on the programme to say "actually, it seems Kevin Keegan has not left Newcastle after all." Ha ha...
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