A book charting the 40-year obsession of a journalist and Newcastle fan is reviewed by Eric Brown…
BY ERIC BROWN
On February 8, 1992, I found myself edging, swaying and elbowing my way to a football ground through tightly-packed supporters agog with excitement and anticipation.
For this was the day Kevin Keegan returned to Newcastle United. The city was buzzing over the return of a man who inspired promotion to the top flight after joining as a player 10 years earlier.
I can’t remember too much about the game won 3-0 by Newcastle against a team of extras in the production called Bristol City. But I do recall the pandemonium of a post-match press conference seemingly attended by half the Gallowgate end. Keegan had to climb on a chair to make himself heard.
The events of that day are indelibly printed on the memory of Andrew Nagy, then a teenaged fan and now author of a club history called “The Battle for Newcastle United.”
He starts with Newcastle teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, some £6.5million in debt, and facing relegation under Ossie Ardiles and the Hall family.
Ossie had to go, and the transformation under Keegan was electric. Three days before Keegan skipped out of the tunnel, waving to the packed crowd, just 15,000 witnessed Newcastle turn a likely win over Charlton into defeat.
Keegan’s appointment doubled the gate, and 3,000 new season tickets were sold. The author comments that it was the first full house he had ever seen. Newcastle’s modern history surely began here.
Nagy guides the reader through some tempestuous experiences which progressed from those shoestring finance days to Newcastle becoming one of the richest clubs in world football under the sheikhs.
Much of the book focuses on the controversial reign of Mike Ashley and the prolonged battle to ease him out. Nagy says Ashley never truly understood what it meant to control Newcastle United.
Keegan’s departure, the arrival of Dennis Wise and what Nagy labels his cockney cronies signalled a loss of identity with the city and injected a sense of distrust among fans.
Nagy admits to missing a large chunk of the period he covers in the book, including Keegan’s third coming.
After securing a degree in journalism, he fell into a job editing Gateshead-based football magazine FC Business. Three years focusing on grassroots clubs left him yearning to interview Ronaldo about the World Cup, instead of Ron from Gravesend about raising cash for a new stand.
So he decided on a move to London with girlfriend Alexandria in the hope of landing a staff job “somewhere.” He edited the bi-monthly recruitment magazine Pathfinder, but no big job offer materialised.
Alexandria, though, hit the jackpot. When she was offered a plum job in Dubai, Andrew went too. For him, the roar of the Gallowgate end was replaced with the three-times-daily summons to prayer of local mosques.
Absence failed to curb his Newcastle obsession, which punctuates this story through 40 years of loyal support featuring Keegan’s dazzling entertainers, Ashley’s zombified Magpies, and Eddie Howe’s trophy winners.
In fact, having spent most of the book lamenting Newcastle’s failure to land a trophy for so long, their Carabao Cup triumph seems to have taken the author and publishers by surprise. It looks like Nagy hurriedly added a short chapter to cover the Carabao Cup win over Liverpool in March 2025.
It’s not clear whether the author was at Wembley, but at least the occasion provides a rousing climax to a chronicle of failures and near-misses.
“The Battle for Newcastle United” by Andrew Nagy is published by Pitch Publishing, price £18.99.
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