Keegan a victim of the modern game

They loved him at St James' Park then because he had led the Geordies gloriously into the Premier League as First Division champions in 1993.

They still love him today, of course, but for Keegan it's all over.

Not just his love affair with Newcastle but, I suspect, his love affair with football.

The modern game has betrayed him - and this time I don't think he'll be back. He knows that the "million miles" that separate clubs like Newcastle and West Ham from the Premier League's big four is a gulf that will continue to demolish egos, devour reputations and diminish heroes.

Keegan is simply the latest victim to topple into the chasm that has developed in our top division.

He acknowledged the depth of the problem back in May when, after a 2-0 defeat against Chelsea at St James', he said that Newcastle were "a million miles" from breaking the stranglehold held by Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool.

The financial culture of modern football at the highest level is alarmingly out of tune with a society heading into recession and one of the current side-effects of this inbalance is the downgrading of those figures in the game we once revered.

Keegan is the latest example. As an English coach, born and bred, he is a rare species in the Premier League. His departure, just 24 hours after Alan Curbishley quit West Ham, could further dilute the English influence at the top end of the game.

As we all know, our League is viewed by foreign players and coaches as simply a convenient means of enhancing their bank balances. The traditions mean little and the future health of the sport even less.

Keegan took his values from managers like Sir Alf Ramsey and Bill Shankly. He can remember the time before the foreign invasion when the club manager was the king of his own patch, left to make all the relevant decisions about the buying and selling of players.

That is why he found it difficult to accept that others now make those decisions in the modern game. He believes, like Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger, that managers stand and fall on their selection making.

So, 40 years after joining Scunthorpe as a £15-a-week apprentice, Keegan has finally turned his back on the modern game. And who can blame him for that?

As a player, he wore his heart on his sleeve and although he may not have been a tactical genius as a coach he was an enthusiastic and inspiring figure who, in his first five-year spell as manager at Newcastle, produced an exciting and vibrant team that threw away a 12-point lead over eventual champions Manchester United in 1996.

That, for me, was the high point of a managerial career that embraced Newcastle, Fulham, Manchester City and England and, ultimately, ended in bitterness and frustration.

Whatever his failings, the passion and energy he demonstrated as a great player were always evident in his management.

And, whether a player or manager, he had an inbuilt sense of timing. He always knew when to say farewell. But few will recognise the irony in this latest goodbye.

His departure from Newcastle is due, in part at least, to the introduction of foreign ideas so we should not forget that when he was at his peak as a player in 1977 he generated ill-feeling on the Kop when he became the first Liverpool star to leave Anfield... for foreign shores. How ironic.