Newcastle United fans have Richard Keys to thank for this | OneFootball

In the 1990s they used to say that Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United side were “everyone else’s second favourite team.”

This was originally first peddled on Sky Sports in live games and also on their other football programmes.

In what may come as a surprise to some of our younger supporters but as I understand it, it was then Sky presenter Richard Keys that gave United the nickname of the ‘Entertainers‘.

Keys would regularly and excitedly talk up the “Toon Army” and he seemed genuine in his like for what was happening on Tyneside.

I honesty don’t know why years later Richard Keys did a double back flip and in more recent times has tried to pour scorn and ridicule on our club.

Back in the day his pundit sidekick Andy Gray was never as keen on us as Keys but this article isn’t about two old duffers who now comment from Qatar.

This is about the myth of United being labelled everyone’s second favourite team.

We played great football under Kevin Keegan but did fans of other clubs really take us to their hearts?

I don’t really think they did. Fans are very fickle and a lot of them took a great deal of enjoyment in our heartbreak in 1996 when we should have won the Premier League.

King Kev was scoffed at for years by media and fans of other clubs, for telling the truth about how a (pre-knighthood) Alex Ferguson had conducted himself in the title run-in.

Only now nearly 30 years later is Kevin Keegan appreciated for his passion and honesty after that game against Leeds at Elland Road (and I was pleased to hear Roy Keane say as much in a recent interview).

I was never interested in being anyone’s second favourite club at the time and in hindsight would probably have swapped a bit of the flamboyance for some out and out ruthlessness.

That is going to be the difference between Eddie Howe’s team now and Kevin’s in the 90s.

Just like KK, Wor Eddie is going to have United challenging for the Premier League title again.

Fans of other clubs now begrudgingly respect us. They have all witnessed a new winning mentality and it makes me smile when I hear and read that Eddie and his team are perfectors of the ‘Dark Arts’ of the game.

I don’t want anyone else to love us and have no time for any other club.

We are proud Geordies from a unique area in the country. It’s stuck too far away for us to be genuinely liked by folk down South, the Midlands and the North West.

I just want my team to be winners, to beat as many of our rivals as we can, and cheese off as many fans of other clubs as possible.

You get nothing for being someone’s second favourite team and Eddie Howe won’t give one jot about such a silly fallacy.