I want you here but it can only be as my No.2 Keegan tells Shearer

"If Alan doesn't see himself as a No 2, then he's not going to come here, is he?" said the new United boss.

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"Am I going to get him in as joint manager? I will speak to Alan once I have got the Bolton game out of the way. I won't go chasing him around. He's said his thing in the papers and the only time we'll really know whether it's on or not is when the two of us speak.

"If he says to me 'I don't want to be No 2' and that is his line then there really isn't any point in having a long conversation."

Keegan's stance came as he and Shearer, who travels to Africa tomorrow on business, were urged to get their act together and become the Premier League's top managerial partnership.

Freddie Fletcher, the former chief executive who engineered Keegan's first appointment as Newcastle boss almost 16 years ago, insisted that the two Tyneside legends could be on the threshold of a place in posterity.

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to put Newcastle where it should be, at the top of the tree," said Fletcher. "For their own, and the sake of this great club, I say: Don't blow it!"

Fletcher, who masterminded Keegan's return from a self-imposed eight-year exile from football in February 1992, outlined a blueprint that would see Shearer come on board at St James' Park and be groomed to take over as manager when the new boss's three-and-a-half year contract is up.

"The ideal scenario would then be for Kevin to move into an executive capacity as director of football," said Fletcher. "In the short term this would achieve much needed stability, but the long-term potential is limitless."

Fletcher's plan came after Keegan, whose return was exclusively revealed in The Mail on Sunday last week, admitted that the Geordie public regarded Shearer as his natural successor.

Keegan said: "I think there is an involvement for Alan at this football club, and involvement at this moment could be on his terms.

"I know he has other obligations and commitments. I know that because when I used to work for TV, you make a promise to people and whether it is to a football club or the BBC or whoever it is, it is a promise and a commitment. But it might be that we can chat about it.

"What a fantastic player to have around the club, to help people with the art of goal-scoring and just talking to the players. But, if you can't be there on a Saturday because you have to do TV work, then you can't even think of yourself as a No 2.

"I will probably say to him, 'I'm here now. Do you see any role for yourself?" — that would be the sensible way to approach it, but Alan and I need to have that conversation and it's not for the Press. He might say he'd love to do it, but it's too early.

"Sometimes, when you have the conversation through the Press, things get missed out but, when we have the conversation ourselves, nothing will be missing."

Keegan's once close association with the player for whom he paid Blackburn a record £16million fee in 1996, taking him back to his hometown club, has cooled somewhat. But he denied that it had anything to do with his non-appearance at Shearer's testimonial match last year.

"I'd like to think there is no animosity there but, if you're asking me if Alan rings me as much as he used to, then no, he doesn't," he added. "I couldn't come to Alan's testimonial because I was on a family holiday in the States. Things like that, sadly, maybe have affected him but it hasn't affected me. It's possibly true that it did offend him in some way but for me to fly all the way from America . . . I wouldn't have expected him to do that for me.

"I would have thought we're still great friends. For all his playing career and from the minute I met him and signed him in David Platt's farmhouse in Cheshire, we had a fantastic relationship and a very honest one. Yes, we are two people who say what they think, but that's good."

Keegan resigned as Newcastle manager in January 1997 after guiding the team to their most successful period for almost 70 years, taking them to within four points of the championship the previous season.

But they will be forever remembered as the team who surrendered a 12-point lead from the end of February. He had threatened to quit on several occasions after a rocky relationship with the previous regime ruled by chairman Sir John Hall, with Fletcher as its administrative head, and admitted he would not have come back had they still been in charge.

"That doesn't mean to say I don't respect them," said Keegan. "If you talk about the way it finished, it was disappointing. Sir John Hall couldn't even be bothered to say goodbye to me, yet we were the two guys who saved the club five years earlier.

"But I understand all those things. I've seen Sir John since and said hello to him. I wouldn't probably go out for dinner with him and all those people, but you must not cloud that with a sense that I don't respect them — I do tremendously."

Keegan, with a £60m transfer budget to spend before the end of January and next summer, will waste no time in strengthening his team.

"This year is going to be about trying to get us in order and as high in the table as possible and we also have to get some players in," he said.

"We're starting from a higher position than last time but it is still a big ask. There are leagues within leagues now and our job is to try to get out of the league we're in, which is middle to below middle, and try to get into that league that has a chance of qualifying for Europe. And I'm probably not talking Champions League.

"But there are possibilities there to win things and I mean the cups, because the big four do treat them with a little disrespect. They'll say they don't but they do, and then in the final they put the strongest team out. Before that they put the kids out and I'm hoping Arsenal do that next week when we play them in the FA Cup."

Keegan conceded this could be his final throw of the management dice.

"You'd probably like to think so, but who knows what might happen from here. I might be like Guy Roux at Auxerre. You don't know with football, but what excites me is this club.

"The last time I was here we didn't have a training ground, we were borrowing facilities from Durham University. But we have more going for us now because of the players."