United's silence is so shameful

There were victims, we were privately informed amid ringing alarm bells.

Geordies were rocked. Shattered. Dismayed. Angry. But above all uninformed.

Had Keegan been sacked? Had he famously walked? Had United self-destructed for the umpteenth time? Oh, the shame of it all being played out before a curious and sniggering nation.

Petrol was poured upon a raging inferno when anxious United fans were disgracefully ignored throughout the long hours yesterday as morning turned into afternoon.

While Sky Sports News and national radio were openly broadcasting to the country from very early on that Keegan had supposedly departed, no official statement, denial or confirmation was forthcoming, which only allowed anger to build to bursting point.

They gathered in their hundreds outside the main entrance of the ground bearing placards, one declaring "Keegan in, Ashley and Wise out," and waving Kevin flags but all to blinding silence. Customers ignored by those who run the shop.

It was almost 7pm last night before a club statement was eventually released. It stated that Keegan had not been sacked and was important to United's present and future, but it didn't state categorically that he was still Newcastle's manager.

If he wasn't sacked and hadn't quit why did it take so long to say so? The Toon Army has been fed confusing statements before and were not to be so easily fobbed off.

Had they not been informed of the glad tidings that Michael Owen had been offered a new three-year contract at £120,000 a week, only for his angry agents to explain that was only with every single incentive coming into play and that in fact his basic wage was reduced?

Hadn't Keegan been reassured after James Milner was sold from under his feet that "three or four" signings were to be his as a way of compensation? Only two came in, both unknowns from Spain where United are now doing more buying than Rafa Benitez.

And, the most ludicrous of all, after television cameras caught Ashley downing a pint in one in full view of the pitch at the Emirates on Saturday, which is illegal for thee and me, United were moved enough to put out an official statement saying that their owner had thought he had been given a non-alcoholic drink.

The trouble is that while Ashley likes to be seen wearing a black-and-white shirt among the fans and buying drinks in the Bigg Market he is as talkative as Howard Hughes when required to explain business decisions.

The communications at St James's Park have reached rock bottom. Fans are kept in ignorance, though their money is readily accepted at the turnstiles. Blind faith is expected as routine.

Take transfer deals for example, the life blood of football clubs. Maybe silence is acceptable, even preferable, while negotiations are going on, but there is a limit.

When the owner turns up on match day wearing a shirt with the name of Fabricio Coloccini on the back of it supporters have the right to presume the player has been signed. However, for fully four days afterwards not a word was uttered publicly on the situation.

As much as Ashley, wearing his King Kev striped shirt and a huge smile of satisfaction, basked in the most romantic of appointments less than eight months ago he must now accept the abject dismay of those KK disciples.

Maybe Ashley relishes sitting with the fans at away grounds but obviously he's not one of them. Otherwise he wouldn't have so greatly misjudged public feeling and, after allowing repeated humiliation of his manager, seen Keegan pushed to the edge of the precipice.

The third coming of KK, a man with a skyscraper reputation on Tyneside, was as mindblowing as the first two but immediately put the Chosen One on a collision course with a ruthless owner.

If the sparks flew between Keegan and Sir John Hall as the fiery pair drove United on relentlessly to become the Entertainers and Premier League runners-up, then Keegan- Ashley was always going to be an even hotter cauldron.

Keegan and Hall respected one another as powerful men used to getting their own way but it still became necessary to ease tension, which was done by using Freddy Shepherd and Douglas Hall as the daily go-betweens from boardroom to manager's office. However, while Ashley has never shared the same building with a proud and headstrong manager on a regular basis his total influence is everywhere within St James's Park.

Ashley has amassed his great fortune by calling all the shots in life and getting away with it. Money is power and whatever are the titles sprayed around at Newcastle there is only one boss.

Keegan supporters would maintain he has been humiliated and undermined throughout his brief tenure back in his old seat.

He didn't want Milner to go but he did, 48 hours after Keegan called such a possibility "unthinkable." KK even ate his own words in front of the television cameras, claiming the sale was his decision.

He also grew increasingly frustrated that Owen hadn't been awarded a new improved contract, which meant his skipper could leave the club for nothing in the very near future. That struck at the very core of Keegan's thinking.

Meanwhile, through all this internal upheaval, United's summer signings bore all the hallmarks of Ashley appointments Dennis Wise and Tony Jimenez, not the man who exclusively did the deals in the Hall days and assembled the most entertaining squad in the country.

Repeatedly, too, there have been leaked stories of Keegan being given a dressing-down by Ashley personally in London or by his trusty lieutenants up here. Meetings on Monday and yesterday would appear to have resulted in the volcano exploding.

To watch KK at Press conferences, after seeing the super confident player and manager first time around, was to note a significant difference.

Often it has been obvious he wasn't being kept in the loop on transfers - or the appointment of Wise for that matter - admitting he didn't know the up-to-the-minute situation and bluffing his way through.

Finally, ironically, as he was trying to placate those United supporters upset at the sale of Milner he insisted optimistically: "I think all things coming out of the club in the next few days will be positive." Instead a bomb was about to be dropped.

There's no question that a lot of players within the dressing-room are very much Keegan men because he's backed them so strongly, both individually and collectively.

They will now feel betrayed, which means an awful lot of damage-limitation work must be done during this international break. Publicly as well as internally.

Keegan has always had a reputation for walking if he didn't like what was going on.

He lived by his famous phrase "it wasn't like this in the brochure" and actually took to his toes on four separate occasions in the early 90s before he finally went halfway through a season after finishing second top of the Premier League.

Would he walk again when much older and presumably a little wiser? A lot of insiders thought not because of his personal financial situation and the belief that, at his age, this would be his last job in football.

Were they wrong? In view of what has occurred not just in the last 48 hours but for weeks and maybe months, the sight of Ashley in his King Kev shirt now looks hypocritical and the public image of the club has never been so low, which is saying an awful lot. This is open season on the Geordies, the time for the rest of the country to smirk and take a pop at the great under-achievers who are Olympic class at shooting themselves in the foot.

We resent that. Geordies don't march upon St James's Park in their fifty thousands because they are stupid or gullible but because they are proud of who they are and proud of the football club that represents them. Keegan understood that passion because he had been here before and witnessed it, and his family roots way back are deep in Geordie soil.

Of course not all he did was right. Particularly, in my opinion, the way he recently backed Barton over his catalogue of criminal offences, glibly talking of giving the player "a second chance" when in fact he had been handed half a dozen and squandered them all.

That made it all too easy for those wishing to have another cheap shot at the black-and-whites.

Perhaps the supreme irony was that on the very day the whole of football was buzzing over Manchester City being taken over by oil-rich Arabs and plundering Robinho for £32m, and Manchester United literally pinching Dimitar Berbatov from Spurs at £30.75m, Newcastle were once again making humiliating headlines over self destruction.

It may be Ashley's club legally and financially, but Newcastle United will forever belong heart and soul to the Geordie people. That fact has to be recognised by all concerned.