Shearer takes over as Newcastle boss

Geordie legend Alan Shearer has agreed a sensational return to St James Park as manager until the end of the season as Newcastle battle to retain their Premier League status.

Shearer, 38, scored 206 goals in 395 games in more than 10 years at Newcastle and has been linked with the manager's post before but was not thought to be keen to get involved in the current set up. But such is Newcastle's plight - they are in the bottom three with just eight games to go - that he has agreed to help out.

Shearer will be the club's fourth manager this season after Kevin Keegan, who resigned early in the campaign, Joe Kinnear, appointed in February but currently sidelined after heart surgery, and caretaker Chris Hughton.

The fact that owner Mike Ashley is expected to lose the services of Dennis Wise, the reviled excutive director of football, this summer, could have swayed Shearer.

Rob Stewart in the Telegraph writes: "Shearer, a world record signing at £15 million in 1996, is still revered on Newcastle but has always shunned the pressure-cooker lifestyle of a Premier League manager to concentrate instead on being a television pundit with the BBC.

He faces a massive job at St James’ Park after answering owner Mike Ashley’s call and has just eight matches left to get the points to keep Newcastle up.

Newcastle have 29 points from 30 matches and sit 18th of 20 teams, two points below 17th-place Blackburn. The news is likely to bring the Toon Army, starved of any meaningful success since the 1950s, thronging to St James’ Park in the same way they greeted Keegan’s return to manage the club for a second time in January of last year.

Few of them will need reminding that Keegan lasted just eight months, driven to despair by what he perceived to be the club’s failure to support his team-building plans."