There has been lots of press reaction to Kevin Keegan's appointment as Newcastle United manager.

We have heard sneering criticisms and snide asides similar to the snooty responses when Avram Grant took over, mutterings that still occasionally come to the surface when the Israeli slips up.

The shrill media's constant cooing around St James' Park started from the moment Keegan put his 'King Kev' crown back on. The legend that they built up around his first tenure was that of an idyllic citadel of courageous attacking in the north east, they played football the right way, they were everyone's second team, and when they were pipped to the post by Manchester United, a nation wept.

'When the transfer window slammed shut without any big-name signings, Keegan was derided as having no knowledge of the game'


The press have taken a different tone with Keegan's return, and after the wall to wall coverage of Keegan-mania the day he returned, they have been nothing but hostile.

The papers portrayed Keegan as a bumbling oaf, washed up, out of touch and completely unable to manage, and made a huge story out of the fact that he had been working at a "soccer circus" - a cheap shot that was too easy to pass up in countless columns up and down the land.

Rumours did the rounds about his pre-match team talks which supposedly involved reading the opposition's team sheet, ostentatiously crumpling said sheet into a ball and tossing it in the bin, and then exclaiming "we can beat this lot!!" 

A similar criticism was levelled at Avram Grant when he apparently started a team chat by outlining a "4-4-1" formation that he planned to use. Such rumours violently surge through the porous football media, and soon solidify into becoming perceived truth.

Because Newcastle United was the media's pet project, whenever there was dead air that needed filling or spare unfilled column inches, they were devoted to Keegan and his beached whale of a club.

Everybody assumed that Geordie fans, so ecstatic with Keegan's return would change their minds as the defeats and losses rolled in without a solitary victory.

And when the transfer window slammed shut without any big name signings, Keegan was derided as having no knowledge of the game, someone so cut adrift from the footballing zeitgeist that he couldn't even drum up any decent suggestions for players to sign.

It is interesting that Sven-Goran Eriksson was also criticised this summer for buying signings too quickly and for acting in too cavalier a manner - signing players on the back of watching some DVDs.

Presumably Keegan would have received the same treatment if he had come in and quickly signed players.

I can see the headlines now: "Keegan in £20m panic buy”, "King Kev; spend spend spend!” These two managers share a filial bond of course, and that could be why the knives were out from the day they started at their latest jobs.

Both Keegan and Sven managed England, they drank from the poisoned chalice that now effectively guarantees that they are public enemy number one. Keegan, Sven, McClaren, Glenn Hoddle - they are all unmitigated disgraces in the media's eyes.

And so here we are, Toon fans don't seem to care that Keegan's results haven't been good, they still claim that they are light years from the funeral march of having Sam Allardyce in charge.

And yet everyone still persists in telling the fans to be unhappy, willing them to reach the end of the tether. When are we going to leave them alone?