Exclusive outstanding interview with Warren Barton – Kevin Keegan, Sir Les, Tino and Sunderland | OneFootball

Welcome to this exclusive interview with Warren Barton.

Our thanks to The Armchair Fan.

This lengthy Warren Barton interview has been split into three, with the first part having been published on Wednesday and the third part to follow on Friday.

An excellent read and our thanks again for all the hard work from The Armchair Fan in bringing this to The Mag.

Enjoy.

Over to The Armchair Fan…

This interview took place over Zoom on Wednesday 2 July, Warren currently lives in America as he is a broadcaster for Fox Sports.

In the three part interview, we began by talking about him signing for Newcastle United in 1995, before moving on to his time playing for the Toon under four different managers and his opinions on the current state of the club.

What was the reaction amongst the players when Kevin Keegan made his famous ‘Love it’ speech?

We knew that was Kevin, he was a very passionate person and he wore his heart on his sleeve. He wanted to do his best for the club and the fans.

We knew it was coming as Sir Alex was trying to press his buttons. He’d mentioned it to us a few times in training. He was just waiting for the right time to say something back.

Because we were the entertainers, Man United would play on a Saturday and then we’d have to wait until the Sunday or the Monday night to play catch up as we were on live TV.

We loved him for it, I think Sir Alex probably did too! We did know it was coming though as Kevin was never going to go down without a fight. It was one of the most iconic premier league moments. Sir Alex might have thought ‘Yes I’ve got him’ but Kevin really didn’t care. We were like ‘let’s do it for him now. Hopefully they will slip up and we can be ready to go on and win it’. That’s the Geordie mentality, we might go down but we’ll go down swinging! (laughs)

Keegan said it would have revolutionised football had we won the title, do you agree?

Yeah, we were different.

He was innovative in what he wanted to do and how he wanted to perceive the game. He wanted to take the feel good factor from Euro 96 and take football away from the dark ages of hooliganism and into a more socially acceptable, family-oriented mainstream. That excitement was how we played the game.

When Pep Guardiaola did that, everyone was trying to imitate his style of play and teams would have done that with us. Clubs like Middlesbrough and Leeds were also spending a lot of money, it wasn’t just the Manchester and London clubs. I totally agree it would have revolutionised football and that’s what makes it worse because we didn’t actually win it. You look at Blackburn and Leicester winning it, Liverpool too who hadn’t won in ages and we should have won it. I think with Sir John, we would have kicked on from there with the money being invested and being generated from the Premier League at that time.

How big of a shock was it when he left the club in January ’97?

A lot of us had signed because of Kevin Keegan, we wanted to play for Kevin. Obviously for the club as well as the fans but a big pull was to play for the gaffa. Me, Les, Shaka, Ginola, Tino, Batty and of course Shearer.

To find out he’d left after we’d just beaten Tottenham 7-1 was a massive let down in a way. Maybe he felt he couldn’t work with the restrictions in place but he could have left at the end of that season. We still had a chance, we’d just signed Alan Shearer for fifteen million pounds which was a world record fee and we had him upfront with Les, David on one side and Keith on the other. That ain’t bad! We always had a chance. We won together and we failed to win the title together and I would never have anyone have a bad word to say about Kevin Keegan. I felt we still had enough in that changing room to push Man United all the way in 96/97, particularly with Alan being in the team and Kevin leading it but he was passionate and unfortunately he left, which was a tough one to take.

Issue 98 – April 1997

It was a difficult time for us as we had no idea, not an inkling that he was leaving. The only people he spoke to were Peter Beardsley and I think Alan Shearer. Me, Les, David and Rob Lee had no idea whatsoever it was coming. He kept it really quiet. We’d played on the Sunday afternoon so had Monday off. We arrived at training on Tuesday morning and were wondering where the gaffa was. We were all called up to this room and Terry Mac got really upset and choked up. We were stunned! It was like a death in the family really, we were sitting there like “what do we do now!?”

Then people like Peter (Beardsley) and Les were saying “Right we’ve got to get on with it”, they were great. Arthur Cox and Terry McDermott said they would take it through to the match at the weekend and we all said “we’re right behind you.” It was tough as it wasn’t like we were playing badly or there had been an argument in the changing room or anything. He wasn’t frustrated with our style of play. It was a major shock. We came into training as normal and it was a bombshell for all of us.

Is it possible to pick a best match during your time at Newcastle?

There’s three that stand out:

My first game was iconic with Les because we were warming up and there were four new signings. We were playing at home and there were just black and white shirts everywhere, all over the city. I picked Les up to go to the stadium and all we could see was black and white. The first match is always special and it’s important as you want to get off to a good start. There was a lot of excitement at the game as we beat Coventry 3-0.

The Barcelona game of course always stands out when you’re playing against the likes of Figo and Luis Enrique who I ended up swapping shirts with. Barcelona is such an iconic club and we were hearing the champions league music before the match. Tino got a hat-trick before we made it a bit nervous for ourselves at the end but held on for the win.

The other one was when we played Nottingham Forest on the last day of the 96/97 season and won 5-0 which meant we’d qualified for the Champions League. We found out at the end of the match that both the smoggies and mackems had been relegated so that was a huge celebration. I don’t remember much about that night! The whole of the next week was enjoyable. I know it’s good for the region to have them all in the Premier League and I am looking forward to the upcoming derbies but it’s always great to see them suffer (laughs). We needed to better both Arsenal and Liverpool’s results. I made a couple of assists and Les got two goals. It was a really good celebration after that.

I was lucky enough to wear that shirt two-hundred and twenty times but If you ask me for specific memories then those are the three that stand out.

Who was the most gifted player you played with on Tyneside?

Peter Beardsley! David Ginola too when he first signed. Me and Rob Lee played in a friendly with him and we’d never seen anything like it! He was bringing balls down on his chest from about seventy yards! Beardsley for me though in training and in games was on another level. Gazza too when we were getting ready for Euro 96, although I didn’t play with him at Newcastle. When Ginola first came in, he was ruining full-backs’ careers but for consistency, I’d have to say Beardsley.

What did you make of Tino Asprilla when he made his debut away at Middlesbrough?

He came in like a breath of fresh air. He was so gifted, so talented and yet so relaxed about it all. He had this confidence about himself, he was carefree. You knew about Tino because of what Parma were doing with Gianfranco Zola, Tomas Brolin, Buffon and Thuram, the list goes on. We were watching Italian football quite a lot throughout the early-nineties and Tino was a big part of that so to see him come in and play for us was like ‘Wow!’ None of us really spoke Spanish, David Ginola was a big help with him though. Tino’s personality helped him mix with the players straight away. To come in and do what he did having just gotten off a plane was brilliant.

It’s good to see him back at the club and see what he’s doing with the kit launch because of how much he cares about the football club. People talk about how he was off the pitch but they can forget how talented he was on it and how much he cared. He would always try and talk about his movement and how he wanted the ball in his broken English even though he had an interpreter. There was always fun and joking but Tino really loved the football club and wanted to do well. He really liked being with us, he came into a very close-knit group. He was a big name but we had other big names as well, everybody loved Tino and would stick by him. He really wanted the team to do well and he had a lot of time for the team.

Whenever he was doing anything, he’d always invite each and every one of us to his house rather than just little cliques. People might get the wrong idea because they talk about him partying or being eccentric but he was really caring and a good teammate as well. He’s a great person.

When you first signed for the Toon was it a surprise that thousands of fans would regularly turn up just to watch training sessions?

Yeah because I’d never experienced that. I’d been told about it but on my first day I thought it might just be because of the new signings and the fact it was summer holidays but then you turn up in December with two feet of snow in the cold and all those people are still there queuing up. I’d never experienced that before.

Training in front of all those people with a hamburger van, your manager sitting on top having a sandwich and a cup of tea watching you train, it was very surreal! That’s probably what made the sessions so upbeat and enjoyable.

I remember sitting with Les in the changing room after our first ten days and saying “have you touched the ball today?” It was flying around everywhere and there were combination games and one-two touch etc. It was brilliant but It was a massive surprise to see that many people. What a lot of people don’t know was that the training ground really wasn’t easy to get to, it was miles away from a train station and you had to walk down country lanes to get there. If it was in the city centre it would have been a lot easier to get to but it was in Durham and thousands of people were making a real trek in the rain and the snow just to get there.

Does missing out on the league title in 1996 still keep you up at night?

Yes, at night and during the day too. Any time anyone mentions the premier league or that season, there’s a little knot in your stomach. You feel “if only”. You try to live with it but I don’t think any of us really got over it or ever will get over it. I’ll take it to my grave. Not so I could sit and say “I’m a premier league winner”, it was for the fans and that’s what hurts, more than anything is that we tried to do it for others and we let so many people down, particularly Sir John Hall and Kevin, all your teammates too.

It’s a tough one but that’s what makes it so special to see the club doing well now. Eddie and the players really appreciate who they are playing for, they are not playing for themselves. Look at Man Utd, their players are playing for themselves but the current Newcastle players get it. Trippier gets what it means to play for Newcastle, Dan Burn too and Eddie. That’s really special.

How did the players feel about signing Alan Shearer for a world record fee?

Everyone was great apart from Lee Clark who had to give his Number ten up to give to Les! (laughs)

That was another ‘wow’ moment. We were in Thailand at the time and the news trickled through that we’d signed him and he was flying out.

I was rooming with Les and we knew a little bit but then Les said to me that he’d been asked to give up the number nine shirt. Les was a gentleman but he’d just scored twenty-five league goals and was PFA player of the year. Les got it that Alan was a Gerodie and it was the number nine so he could see the bigger picture. The news was phenomenal, we’d all watched him score the goals at Euro 96 and just knowing that you’re going to be playing with him and having those two up front with Tino, Peter, Gillespie and Ginola, you felt that could be the final piece. Again, that’s why it stings so much that KK left that January. You felt that having those players together, we wouldn’t have to defend if we kept giving that lot the ball, we’d always have a chance to win any match.

When Kenny Dalglish was appointed manager, did you feel he was the right man for the job and has that opinion perhaps changed in hindsight?

Yeah, I felt we needed someone to bring stability.

Kenny Dalglish was a football man who had been successful and worked well with Alan Shearer. Everybody respected him when he came in. Under him, Blackburn had been on fire, they had Shearer and Sutton upfront and played with two wingers. They played very aggressive football. The instinct was that he was a big-time manager who knew his football. We didn’t have an inkling that he was going to play a little bit more defensively because Blackburn had won the title playing the way that they did with two wide players and we had that.

Issue 104 – November 1997

Sir Bobby would have been the ideal choice but he was at Barcelona. If you watch that documentary you can see Newcastle were trying to get Bobby but, being the man he is, he said he’d wait until the end of the season. Unfortunately it was all about timing. Kenny came in, got us to a Cup Final and achieved Champions League football.

When Sunderland were promoted in ’96 did it come as a surprise just how big a derby it is and what it means to the region as a whole?

The actual game? Yes. They’d not been up there for a while. We knew there was total dislike. You’d never wear red. When you are actually going against them and going toe-to-toe with them under Peter Reid, they were a tough team to play against and then you’ve got the atmosphere and everything else that goes with it. It really hit home when we went to Roker Park, I knew we didn’t like them but that was a totally different level. Away fans were even banned from that match!

Issue 123 – June 1999

When Ruud came out and said it’s just a regional thing, he didn’t understand it. They don’t like us and we don’t like them and that’s the bottom line. There’s no in between. With the smoggies it’s a bit different as they’re further away but Sunderland really don’t like us which is fine – as long as we win!

Les Ferdinand said he never wanted to leave Newcastle. How did the players feel when he was sold on the same day that Alan Shearer sustained a long-term injury?

We were devastated.

I was away with Les that summer and Kenny had said to him that he wasn’t guaranteed to play every game that season as some away matches he was planning on playing Shearer up front on his own. I was like “don’t be silly. You’ve scored all these goals, you were PFA player of the year, he’s just saying that. Just turn up because he’s not going to drop you” but it hit a nerve with Les, he was a very proud man. He’d worked extremely hard to get where he was at Newcastle and he wasn’t going to take that lying down.

Gerry Francis from Tottenham was on the phone constantly. I was at the other end saying “just hang on in there” but he’d made up his mind and then Alan dislocated his ankle and we were devastated because we’d lost fifty-odd goals straight away. As much as we still had Tino and Jon Dahl Tomasson who was a young lad at the time, a very good player who went on to win a Champions League medal with AC Milan, it wasn’t Les and Alan.

It then started snowballing, Ginola wasn’t happy, John Beresford too and you’re missing good players and your friends as well. No disrespect to the people who came in but they weren’t at the same level. As much as you want to be single-minded and concentrate on yourself, losing Les was a big, big shock. He was a good friend of mine and still is. Ginola too, our families lived near each other and became close. He’d had enough and said it wasn’t what he signed up for. When you lose big personalities from the dressing room and then you get news about Alan’s injury, it was a double whammy to say the least.