Farewell to Kev for the last time
IN the end, something had to give.
And Kevin Keegan, dignified to the last, reluctantly walked away from the club closest to his heart, for the second, and most probably last, time.
Keegan felt he had no option, and given the revelations of the past few days, few fans will blame him.
The shackles which had tightened by the month since his emotional return to St James's Park in January had become intolerable.
And owner Mike Ashley's honeymoon is well over.
So much so that it will surely be a long, long time before he is able to stand in the away end alongside the loyal - and long-suffering - supporters who idolised Keegan above all others.
Bringing Keegan back to the club had appeared a masterstroke.
Yet the appointment of Dennis Wise just nine days later rang alarm bells, with the unwieldy structure put in place above Keegan seemingly undermining him before the ink was dry on his contract.
The first cracks became evident after the home defeat to Chelsea on the penultimate weekend of last season.
Keegan, above all else, is honest, and he wasn't going to pull the wool over the eyes of a fanbase which has suffered enough over the past few decades.
Keegan knew he wouldn't be able to spend big in the summer, and challenging for a Champions League place was an impossibility over the course of his three-year contract.
Ashley, of course, reprimanded Keegan over his explosive comments.
But the frustrations were never far below the surface from then on, and Keegan's silence over the summer months was telling.
For one, he didn't know a great deal about incoming transfers, and secondly, he might have said something he might later regret.
Keegan talked up the few arrivals, but Danny Guthrie aside he had little say in any of them, with most presented to him by Wise et al as a fait accompli.
Still, Keegan felt he had some kind of control of those leaving the club. He was wrong.
The James Milner saga, and the clumsy attempts to hawk the likes of Joey Barton and Michael Owen around on transfer deadline day, were the final straws.
And the end was as sad as it was inevitable.
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Weather for South Shields
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
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Temperature: 9 C to 20 C
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