'King Kev' gives lovers and haters in the media something to talk about. And do they ever

We are caught in a vicious circle of Geordiedom. A set of media-driven archetypes have dominated the back-page reports of Kevin Keegan’s return – hailed by both the Sun and the Daily Mirror as God On The Tyne – and are vigorously embraced by the very people they patronise. The main thrust of this onslaught was gleeful, ridiculous hyperbole about the special nature of Newcastle. Kenny Dalglish, communicating via the Daily Mail’s Steve Curry, saw St James’ Park as “a thrill centre where the password is passion”. In the Daily Telegraph, Henry Winter quickly identified “Toon Army foot soldiers”, reading news of Keegan’s arrival “with such awe, like scholars feeling the Dead Sea Scrolls, touching the words to check if they were really true”. The People’s Dave Kidd told of his father-in-law cutting short a holiday for Keegan in 1982: “Take the tent down, pet, we’re ganning home.” A standard-issue Geordie tale, until Kidd breathlessly informs us that he wasn’t “one of those tattooed, topless-in-the-snow Newcastle fans either. He was a coroner.” Thanks for that, Dave.

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There is something hugely significant about picking a leader in England and it is not lost on Fabio Capello

Fabio Capello will have a lot to adjust to in his new job. One issue is how to bolster the confidence of players who have become experts at losing; more specifically, there’s the question of how to put across technical instructions on the training ground given that his main coaching assistant, 70-year-old Italo Galbiati, doesn’t speak English and his new English assistant, Stuart Pearce, doesn’t speak Italian. Another problem that will be new to him is the importance attached to the captaincy – the Italian media may analyse a team selection in microscopic detail, but no one really cares who the captain is. Indeed, in many cases, it has simply been a question of giving the armband to whoever happens to have the most caps. How differently we do things here.

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England need to get Jack Warner on side if they hold any hope of hosting the 2018 World Cup

As you know, the England team won’t be too busy this summer. So they are arranging a friendly for June, in Trinidad to celebrate the centenary of the FA there. This will be the first time that a full England team have played in the Caribbean, which is surprising, though not more so than the fact that their only ever game in Anglophone Africa was in Durban in 2003. 

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A season in which northern clubs made a revival saw Aston Villa move into the third tier, by Keith Wilson

The long-term significance
The promotion of Blackpool and Huddersfield represented a brief revival for traditional northern clubs – against a prevailing trend. At the start of the 1960s Blackpool had been one of five Lancashire town teams in the First Division. By the end of that decade, with the abolition of the maximum wage badly affecting many smaller clubs, only Burnley were left – and they were to be relegated with Blackpool in 1970-71 (to return briefly in the mid‑1970s). Huddersfield, who had spent several seasons more at the top level than their west Yorkshire rivals Leeds, returned to Division Two after two seasons. Like Blackpool, they have spent much of the past 38 years in the bottom two divisions.

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Dear WSC
Vaughan Roberts asks (Letters, WSC 251) if any of the schoolboys who took part in ITV’s Penalty Prize competition went on to become pros after their appearance in the shootout before the 1974 FA Cup final. Well, at least one did. Stuart Beavon was already on Spurs’ books at the time he put five out of six spot-kicks past Gordon Banks, no less. He made only three first-team appearances for Spurs but became a fixture in Reading’s midfield, playing almost 500 games during the Eighties. His penalty-taking prowess remained intact and in March 1988 he returned to Wembley to put Reading into the lead from the spot as they beat Luton 4-1 in the Simod Cup final. However, Stuart’s most famous penalty was a deliberate miss. Before the FA launch a belated match-fixing inquiry, Stuart’s failure came in Channel 4’s football drama The Manageress. Gabriella Benson/Cherie Lunghi’s team were based at Elm Park and had to win their last game of their season to win promotion and, 1-0 up with a minute to go, conceded a penalty. The script, of course, required the actor keeper to save the spot-kick and Stuart was asked to take the penalty. Apparently, it took ten kicks before the director was satisfied. In Reading’s next game Beavon took a real penalty, which he missed, blaming his failure on becoming accustomed to missing through his TV appearance. That miss cost Reading a win and, nine days later, it also cost manager Ian Branfoot his job, surely the only manager to be sacked because of a TV series.
Alan Sedunary, via email

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