Shearer V Ashley: the battle begins

The news this morning that the clean-cut former England centre-forward Alan Shearer (pictured) is to be the new manager at his old club Newcastle United will delight his fans on Tyneside. But could the appointment have echoes of the fractious 44 days Brian Clough spent at Leeds United, as documented in the new British movie The Damned United? For while Shearer gets on with the club’s players, it is well known that his relationship with its owner, Mike Ashley, are far from cordial.

Shearer is said to have barely exchanged a word with Ashley since he took over the club in May 2007. And relations worsened when Kevin Keegan quit as manager last September after a row with Ashley about the buying and selling of players, a situation that led to mass protests from the fans who threatened to stay away from matches – a position Shearer appeared to tacitly support.

He said at the time: “Without the fans, there would not be a Newcastle United. So they deserve their say. They deserve to have their opinions heard. They are angry, because they care about their football club.”

A Geordie himself, Shearer, 38, is a local hero at Newcastle and something of a Roy of the Rovers figure – happily married and far removed from the night-club-obsessed, fast car-driving players of today. He retired from international football following the Euro 2000 tournament, having amassed 63 appearances and 30 goals for England, and remains the Premier League's record goalscorer after scoring 422 goals for club and country.

But he has his work cut out. Newcastle are currently third from bottom of the Premier League and he has just eight games left to effect the about-turn Newcastle need to avoid relegation, a fate that would send the club’s finances into meltdown. And while he’s made a second career for himself as a regular pundit on the BBC’s Match of the Day, he’s never managed a football club before.

WHAT THEY ARE SAYING

Kevin McCarra, the Guardian: As desperate measures go this one at least has an uncommon amount of glamour in its favour. Were circumstances less desperate at St James' Park people would laugh at the sheer corniness of Alan Shearer so abruptly becoming manager there… As an analyst, he has offered sufficient observation without suggesting that he has a piercing insight into the game. The squad will react to him because of who he is, not because of what he might know. They will have a sense of being saved rather than just dying a lonely death.

Oliver Kay, the Times: There are certain reasons why the phrase 'Geordie Messiah' sprung so readily to mind last night as news of Alan Shearer's appointment at St James' Park filtered through. Newcastle United is a club that calls out for such intervention, just as it did when Kevin Keegan came to their rescue 17 years ago… The question, from Shearer's point of view, is simple: why now? He was supposed to be waiting until his hometown club had sunk to rock bottom, until it had reached the point at which it could only be propelled upwards, but instead he has taken over at a time when he must fear that Newcastle could yet slip even further towards oblivion.