Do you want to do a Leeds? KK’s grim question

Mar 16 2008 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

KEVIN KEEGAN has a chilling warning for anyone who believes Newcastle are too good – or too big – to go down . . .

“Look at Leeds.”

The Magpies head into tomorrow night’s Premier League basement battle at Birmingham with some fans still struggling to contemplate a drop into the Championship.

But Keegan has no need of a reality check as he looks for his first win in nine games since returning to St James’s Park.

For he is all too aware that relegation neither respects reputations nor, as Leeds’ torrid experience proves, offers any guarantees against even worse decline.

The Elland Road giants, after a catastrophic five-year fall from grace which saw them go from the Champions League to League One, are facing a second successive season in English football’s third tier.

“If we start thinking we’ve got a divine right to be in this division, then we are in trouble,” insisted Keegan. “No one has got a divine right to be in this division. Look at Leeds.

‘’We’ve got to earn the right to be in this division.”

Keegan himself spared Newcastle the ignominy of relegation from the old Division Two in 1992, but cites more recent examples of the perils of dropping out of the Premier League.

“The repercussions for us would have been bad when we could have gone into the Third Division,” he reflected.

“It would have been a disaster, but Leeds, Nottingham Forest and Manchester City have all done it since.

“Not being in the Premier League next season would be bad in itself too. But we turned it around last time, which is why I believe we can do it again.”

And Keegan had another message to fans nearing the end of their tether with several of United’s established but under-performing so-called stars . . .

“Blame me!”

The likes of Alan Smith, Joey Barton and Damien Duff risk becoming the targets of supporters who justifiably expect better of the club’s bigger names.

But Keegan added: “The criticism should come at me and not the players. They have given it everything they’ve got.

“It’s the manager who’s got to carry the pressure. It’s the manager who picks the team, it’s the manager who sets out the way they’re going to play, so it all has to come down to me. That’s the fair way.

“Yes, we might have created more chances in games – that’s one bit of criticism – but if I didn’t see the effort there, I would be the first to say it, as I have in the past.

“The players have taken a lot of blows and I’ve said all along that lack of confidence is our biggest problem at the moment. But win a game, score a couple of goals and it comes flowing back, football’s always been like that.

“I know we've got the players here to do better. We have the experience and certainly the ability to win football matches, and that’s what gives me strength; that’s what gives me optimism.

“If we didn’t have that, I’d be worried. But we have. We’ve got very good players here.”

Defeat tomorrow would mean Newcastle have suffered five straight league defeats for the first time in the Premiership.

But although they last lost five on the bounce during their successful relegation fight under him in 1991/92, Keegan insists home form rather than coincidence will be what keeps United afloat this season.

“We’ve got three of the teams around us at home, which I think is good,” he said. “We’ve only got one of the top four to come to us, which is Chelsea, for the second last game of the season.

“Yes, we have to go to Portsmouth, go to Spurs and go to Everton – teams that are trying to get into Europe. But if you look at the other fixtures, some of the teams at the bottom have got to play Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal.

“While our fixture list isn’t easy, you can see where we can get 10 or 12 points from, you can see games that we can win.

“We’d expect, in our own stadium, to win games.”