Keegan’s Premier League days over

10:29am Saturday 6th September 2008

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JOHN Toshack doubts whether Kevin Keegan will ever manage in the Premier League again.

Wales boss Toshack is a long-standing friend of Keegan from their Liverpool days in the 1970s, when they were strike partners.

And he fears there will be other English managers who will walk away from their clubs under the circumstances that have seen Keegan and Alan Curbishley quit this week.

They left Newcastle and West Ham respectively, apparently because they did not have control over transfer policy.

Toshack has experienced similar circumstances many times in his time as a club manager in Europe, particularly in two spells with Real Madrid.

And he believes Britishbased managers who have the final say in deals in and out of clubs are becoming increasingly rare.

He said: ‘‘They used to allow me about two of my signings from every six!

‘‘I don’t know whether Kevin will be back in the Premier League.

‘‘But it seems to me that the only person who signs players should be the manager who has to work with them at 10.30am every morning.

‘‘I was brought up on that as a manager. It was generally accepted that managers decided who the players should be, and he signed them.

‘‘Then I started working abroad at a Basque club, Real Sociedad, who could not sign players anyway.

‘‘But then when I worked with other clubs, unfortunately, players were signed that I knew little about.

‘‘At Real Madrid I think I had two choices from every six signed! The president would come to me and ask my opinion, listen, and then tell me that the players had already been signed.

‘‘That happened more than once. In Europe that is very much the style; other people sign players and coaches coach.’’ Toshack, 59, said: ‘‘The British manager is unique now. All over Europe it is different.

Now the game is changing in the Premier League, with a lot of foreign people and money coming in.

‘‘So in the British game it is happening more and more.

The two who have quit this week, Kevin and Alan Curbishley, played at around the time I did and were brought up in a certain way.

‘‘Managers now end up with players they didn’t sign, and if they don’t do well the team fails and the manager gets the sack, while the people who made the signings keep their jobs.

‘‘But this has been happening in Europe a long, long time. I know Kevin very well and he is honest and wears his heart on his sleeve.

‘‘But his body language told me that things were not right.

I last saw him in Majorca when Newcastle played a preseason game there, and the vibes were not good.

‘‘Kevin and Curbishley have had enough. I felt this would happen, and I believe it will happen even more now to English managers.’’