Premier League history is littered with red letter days and Monday 29 April 1996 will for ever rank among the most memorable. Thirty years on, recollections of the aftermath of Newcastle’s 1-0 victory at Leeds remain vivid. Keith Gillespie’s goal saw Kevin Keegan’s team move three points behind the leaders, Manchester United, with two fixtures remaining.
Before Newcastle’s visit to Elland Road, Sir Alex Ferguson craftily suggested that Leeds and Nottingham Forest – the team Keegan’s players would visit three days later – would not try as hard as they had against his own side. Ferguson also pointedly reminded everyone Newcastle had agreed to provide the opposition for Stuart Pearce’s testimonial by the Trent later in the year. This backdrop dictated that Keegan used a live post-match television interview with Richard Keys and Andy Gray of Sky Sports to claim the moral high ground while also walking straight into Ferguson’s psychological trap.
Rarely can a live link between Elland Road and a television studio have provided such TV gold, yet this four-minute treasure initially simmered along in gentle fashion before boiling over. The turning point came when Keys asked Keegan – whose “Entertainers” had been 12 points clear at the top of the table in January – if he blamed “tension” for Newcastle’s slow start in West Yorkshire. The question may have been bland but it was also loaded and Keegan seized the bait.
“I don’t think you can discount it,” said Newcastle’s manager. “A lot of things have been said over the past few days, some of it almost slanderous.” That clearly referenced Ferguson’s claim, made on 17 April following United’s 1-0 victory against Leeds at Old Trafford, that Howard Wilkinson’s players had “cheated” their coach earlier in the season. “Why are they not in the top six,” mused Ferguson. “To me they’re cheating they’re manager. You wait and see the difference when they play Newcastle.”
The Scot was playing mind games and Keegan proved a study in righteous indignation. “I’ve kept really quiet but I’ll tell you something, he went down in my estimation when he said that,” he told Keys and Gray, temperature rising, finger relentlessly jabbing towards the camera. “We have not resorted to that.
“You can tell him now, we’re still fighting for this title and he’s got to go to Middlesbrough and get something. And I’ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if we beat them. Love it.”
In the proceeding decades Keegan, now 75 and starting to get out and about again after gruelling cancer treatment, would become accustomed to strangers shouting “Love it” at him from passing car windows. Yet that iconic diatribe very nearly never took place. When Geoff Shreeves, the touchline reporter responsible for linking Keegan to the studio, inspected the small broadcast hut set to house Newcastle’s manager he was hit by a noxious smell. Requests to Elland Road staff for air freshener fell on deaf ears. Eventually, a Leeds player lent Shreeves a can of deodorant and, with the interview salvaged, a history shaping stage was set.
Forest held Newcastle to a 1-1 draw, and with United going on to win 3-0 at Middlesbrough and Newcastle drawing their final match of the season against Tottenham, also 1-1, the Premier League trophy went to Old Trafford. Ferguson’s deployment of the so-called dark arts was subsequently interpreted as a masterstroke. Managerial mind games received as much credit as Eric Cantona.
Keegan demurs. “It was nothing to do with mind games,” he told the Irish Examiner in an interview marking the diatribe’s 20th anniversary. “It was just that Sir Alex Ferguson, I think, sometimes struggled to give teams credit and always looked for excuses. What he said was wrong, that teams like Leeds wouldn’t try as hard against us as they did against Manchester United. And that hit on something deeper: it was almost saying that football’s not straight. So that was my anger, if you like, at Sir Alex.
“I respect Sir Alex very much for what he’s done, but I think he and Arsène Wenger are the two least favourite managers of mine because they never give anyone else credit. If they lose the shirt was the wrong colour, or it’s the referee. To say: ‘We lost today because they were magnificent,’ I think you’ve got to do that sometimes.”
Critics suggested Keegan’s outburst unnerved Newcastle, but the club’s class of 1995-96 have consistently disagreed. “I don’t think any of the players would say it put pressure on us,” said Gillespie. “I loved the passion Kevin showed. To me, it was an absolutely brilliant reaction.”
As the interview unfolded, Keegan’s players were sat on a luxury coach waiting to depart Elland Road. They had already said goodnight to their manger, who lived on Teesside and would later drive home in his own car. A phone call from a player’s girlfriend alerted everyone to the unfolding drama and the television screens the coach had only recently been fitted out with were immediately switched on.
At that point, the large car park behind the John Charles Stand remained gridlocked and, as Keegan’s outburst hit the radio airwaves, some Newcastle supporters wound down windows to bellow approval. Others hooted their horns. “The fans loved Kevin’s response,” insisted Gillespie.
A few of those who inched their way through that traffic may also be in the audience at the Tyne Theatre when Keegan and his friend, the broadcaster, Pete Graves, present “The King Returns: an evening with Kevin Keegan” on 31 May. “Kev’s been going through a really tough time,” said Graves. “He’s been very poorly but the great news is that he’s responded well to his treatment and he’s feeling a lot better.
“He’s not out of the woods yet but he’s feeling strong enough to come out and see people and tell his stories and relive wonderful memories.”