Free How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography by Keith Gillespie Page A

Newcastle?” I said. “Would that be a good club to play for?” He was very positive, wondering aloud what it must be like to experience that kind of atmosphere every week. I agreed with his sentiments and, before the game was over, told him that it wasn’t a hypothetical discussion for me. This was the real thing. And, in a short space of time, I had already come around to the conclusion that I was going for it. That was my gut instinct.
    Although I had three years left on my contract, the fact that Newcastle United wanted me now was decisive. Kevin Keegan wouldn’t be looking for me unless he was going to put me in his team, and regular Premier League football in a passionate place carried a serious appeal. My life’s mission had been to establish myself at Manchester United, but now my head was turned by a new Plan A.
    I went down to the dressing room where the word was out. Steve Bruce, a Geordie, came straight over and said it would be a fantastic move. Brian McClair said the same thing. They were already preaching to the converted.
    From there, it all happened very quickly. A private car arrived to take the gaffer and I to a hotel in Sheffield where a contingent from Newcastle were waiting.
    This was new territory. I’d never entered these kind of negotiations before, and the gaffer must have sensed what I was thinking. “Look,” he said, “if you’re happy enough, I’ll sort out the deal here and make sure it’s a good one for you.”
    He told me to ring my mum who thought it was bad news when the phone rang close to midnight. The gaffer asked to speak to her and explained the situation, promising that he would do his best for me. She trusted him, and gave her consent. My manager was now my agent.
    We then headed for a private meeting room where Keegan, the Newcastle chief executive Freddie Fletcher, and board member Freddy Shepherd were sitting around a table.
    This was a serious deal for both parties. Cole was the form player in the Premier League, and it was obviously important for the gaffer that the negotiations went well.
    But he was looking out for me too. I copped on to that pretty early in discussions. We were talking money and I was sitting there, as a £250 a week player, unsure how much I could reasonably look for.
    The gaffer was two steps ahead. “Keith’s on £600 a week at the moment so he’ll be looking for an increase on that,” he announced. I put on my best poker face and rolled with it, wondering if this was normal. In those days, I was an innocent lad about the ways of football.
    But while I was trying to look cool about my fictional wage, the Newcastle lads didn’t seem too unhappy. They were happy to double it and put me on a similar contract to Lee Clark, a local lad who was making a big impression. As they talked figures, the gaffer took out a pen and paper and started doing the sums and working on the multiples, scribbling away while I made small talk. It was a bit surreal.
    Keegan was selling the club to me, although he was hardly going to talk about his other transfer targets with a rival manager sitting there. He spoke about wanting to build a team to challenge, and how he felt I could make a serious contribution. After an hour or so of easy chat, I shook hands on a deal worth £1,200 a week, with a £175,000 signing-on fee to be paid in instalments across my four-year contract.
    My temporary agent had served me well. He asked if I was happy on the trip back to Manchester and, beyond saying yes to that, there was little to say. There was no dramatic goodbye, but I couldn’t say a bad word about how he handled it. He looked after me. I was in a lift at York races many years later when the doors opened and Sir Alex and his wife walked in, and my natural instinct was to sharpen up because he was the boss, even though we hadn’t worked together in years. That was his influence, his presence. Maybe a different character would have spent that last car journey through the night