But United wanted more. Ferdinand wanted more. Keegan wanted more. The solution? Pay £15 million for a Geordie centre-forward who had just scored half-a-dozen more than Ferdinand for Blackburn Rovers.
"Keegan said to me, 'look, I'm going to sign Alan Shearer, and the reason I'm telling you is because everyone's going to think you're leaving this football club,'" Ferdinand begins. "I want you to know that there's no way on this earth that you're leaving this football club. I'm buying him so you two can play together. I'm not trying to prove anybody wrong. I just believe that you two can play together.' I said, 'brilliant, no problem.'"
As confidence votes go, it was a landslide, emphatic as they come. As he walked away, Keegan had one more nugget of information to pass on. "'He's asked if he can have the number nine shirt.' I asked Kevin to repeat it, and he said, 'well you know, Alan's worn it all his life, everywhere he's gone.'"
Ferdinand’s eyes glisten as he explains that his response to Keegan was that he had also sported nine everywhere he went, too. “But listen, while I was saying all this to him and having a laugh and a joke about it, I was saying to myself, ‘I've never stood in this stadium and supported the guy that wore the number nine, Jackie Milburn or Malcolm McDonald, etc. I knew Alan had done that; I knew Alan was coming home. This wasn't my home. I could understand why he wanted to wear the number nine shirt. So, it wasn’t a problem.”
You were just making Keegan squirm? “Yeah, exactly!”
***
Ferdinand’s route to 149 Premier League goals was a long ’un. His career began on the London non-league scene, for Southall and then Hayes. It was at the latter that his talent came across QPR’s desk, and he was signed just before he turned 20. A season later, in 1988/89, he was loaned to Besiktas of all places.
Gordon Milne, United’s director of football during the Sir Bobby Robson days of the early 00s, had just gone to Istanbul. He called QPR’s then manager Jim Smith looking for a centre forward. Smith suggested Ferdinand needed a make-or-break opportunity and, having watched him train, Milne deemed him perfect.
Isleworth to Istanbul is quite a culture shock. “The abiding memory was going from playing for QPR reserves, in front of, if we were lucky, 100 people, to a traini
ng session where 30,000 fans turned up. They had a high regard for British football at the time, so there was expectation. But it ended up being really successful.” Goals against both Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe in a pre-season tournament certainly helped endear Ferdinand to supporters.
His time in Turkey effectively served as his apprenticeship, and Ferdinand returned to England having scored 14 league goals and earned a cup winner’s medal. Slowly but surely, he became QPR’s premier forward, finishing the 1992/93 season with 20 Premier League goals. A side containing Darren Peacock, Ray Wilkins, and Andy Sinton came fifth. Across the next two seasons 40 more top-flight strikes followed and that tempted United. Transfers operated very differently back then to how they do now, though.
Newcastle had apparently been in for Ferdinand a few seasons prior, but in real time he was unaware. Back then “contact was made between clubs,” Ferdinand explains. “
And I wasn't told until much later that Newcastle had come in before. Same as Man United, same as Arsenal, all these clubs that had come in. I wasn't told about it at the time.”
“Nowadays if a club's interested in a player, they contact the agent and say, ‘right, we've done our bit. We've made the bid. Now the player's got to do what he's got to do to get himself out.’ Back in the day you didn’t see that regularly.”
United offered £6 million and once Ferdinand had “spoken to Kevin Keegan, once the decision was made that I was going to leave, the choice was pretty easy,” he says. “An earlier opportunity to go to Man United was quashed and I’d told QPR, ‘I'm going to leave at the end of the season, you know?’ I felt it was the right time to see if I could take myself to another level.
“I'd played against Newcastle numerous times. I always put their fans on a par with Liverpool in terms of, if you go there as a player and your team play well and you win, they stay and clap you off the pitch.
“We went to Newcastle the year before and QPR beat them at St James' Park for the first time in a long, long time. I remember them clapping us off, and I went into the changing rooms and said, ‘could you imagine playing in front of that week in, week out?!’
“So, I'd already had a taste of that and who better to learn off than a former European Player of the Year? If I was going to learn from someone, it was certainly going to be Kevin.”
Sharing those thoughts were Warren Barton, Shaka Hislop, and David Ginola who all joined United in the summer of 1995. By the season’s close, David Batty and Tino Asprilla had also arrived.
Barton and Ferdinand, with their London connection, immediately became “good buddies” while “Lee Clark and Steve Watson, who were younger players, decided to take me under their wing and show me the lights.”
Ferdinand pauses and a smirk arrives. “OK. Some dingy places as well, to be honest with you – it wasn’t just the lights! Probably not the best two wings to be put under, but they looked after me, took care of me. The camaraderie between the players was second to none. It was unbelievable. I think that's what got us to where we got to.”
While Keegan was no master technician, a people’s person, a reader of rooms and moods, he very much was. “I think Kevin was very methodical in what he'd done, and he would have thought about the personalities as well as the abilities of those players. He would have thought about whether we could become a team. That would have been of utmost importance to him.
“He would have done his background checks in terms of whether he felt I would connect with Warren, whether we'd connect with David, whether we'd connect with Asprilla, whether we'd connect with the Geordie boys. I think he got the blend really right.”
Hang on. Methodical. An intriguing word to associate with Keegan, right? “In terms of planning he was,” Ferdinand explains. “On the coaching side, he just put great players together and thought, ‘they'll work it out.’ I think that's what he came from at Liverpool, and so that's why he gets a bit of stick about his coaching. But he was very good at putting people together and getting into people's psyches.”
Training at Durham University’s Maiden Castle pitches was largely formatted by Chris McMenemy, with small-sided, fast-paced mini-games common. The best touch? “Lee Clark,” Ferdinand responds without a sniff of hesitation. “Phenomenal touch. He springs to mind immediately.
“Rob Lee was probably the best player I ever played, but I didn’t realise how good he was until I played with him. He could run with the ball. He could dribble. He could shoot. He could score.
“When I played against him, I hadn't seen all of that. Once I played with him and trained with him every day, I was like, ‘bloody hell, you're a great player.’ Every day I would just think, ‘yeah, Rob Lee's a player.’”
Ferdinand was well-acquainted with fanatical supporters from his Turkey travels, but at Newcastle having fans attend training was part of Keegan’s inclusivity drive. “You've got to remember that we were sold out to 36,000 season-ticket holders,” Ferdinand says.
“So, there was a load of people that never got to see the team play on a Saturday. Keegan was very aware of that and gave an opportunity for those fans who didn't have season tickets, who couldn't watch us, to come and see us train.
“I remember my first day of pre-season, I arrived and there were people with deck chairs and I’m thinking, ‘what are they going to do?’ They just sat around the pitch, and we ran off into the forest to do pre-season training. They knew that there was going to be football in the afternoon, so they sat there all morning in the sunshine!”
What Ferdinand had not previously experienced, though, was sharing facilities with undergraduate students of law, geography, and English. “After a really hard session I was washing my hair - had a little bit more of it back then – and I said to someone, ‘f**k, that was a hard session today, wasn't it?’ The person didn't say anything. So I went, ‘didn't you think it was hard?’ And he still didn't say anything. I washed the soap out of my eyes, and I look around and it's just a geezer from the university having a shower. He hadn't done the training that we'd done so he's thinking, ‘what's the geezer talking about?’”
Ferdinand recalls his competitive debut vividly. 19th August 1995. Newcastle United 3-0 Coventry City. United’s new number nine was up and running.
“Lee Clark and Steve Watson told me I’d float out of the tunnel and I’m thinking, ‘yeah, yeah.’ After the warmup, the stadium was still half empty. I went back in, but Lee told me to wait and see. All of a sudden, we came down the tunnel and the noise was deafening. I floated out of the tunnel, came up the stairs, and floated out the other side.
“The game didn't go as well as I wanted it to go in terms of the way that I played. But I felt I was going to get opportunities, and then I got this opportunity. Rob Lee played the ball through, I went around the goalkeeper and scored from an angle.”
Suddenly Ferdinand had little Peter Beardsley leaping on his back. “He said, ‘why don't you be a little bit more casual about it?’ I didn't know what he was talking about. But I always say to people, I knew the number nine was a massive number on Tyneside. However, when I scored that goal, I realised how big a number I had on my back. Because if there was a roof on the stadium, it would have come off.”
Ferdinand had not requested nine; Keegan told him it was his. “I didn't go there thinking, I'm going to wear the number nine. Because I think I would have put pressure on myself if I had done that. Do you know what I mean?
“I just thought, ‘whatever number you give me, I'm going to wear it and I'm going to score goals here.’ I'd worn the number nine all my life, and then Andy Cole had left and so the number nine was available. The shoe fitted.
“I felt I was going to go to Newcastle and score goals. I felt like I could go - and this is not being big-headed or flashy - anywhere in the Premier League at that time and score goals. That's how confident I was in myself.”
Soon Ferdinand was in a waistcoat, and the famous snaps of him during a charity fashion show in September 1995 were taken. United topped the Premier League at that point, and with Kenny Thomas providing the music, Ferdinand, Ginola, Barton et al all sported a new range of leisurewear. Neither Ferdinand nor Ginola seemed bashful. Ferdinand laughs when the night is raised. “I didn't bicep curl, but I was in pretty good nick at the time. I wasn't fazed by Ginola or anyone else!”
Indeed, neither Ferdinand nor United were fazed by anyone, the team opening the season like greyhounds chasing a shiny, trophy-like hare. Ferdinand bagged 13 goals in the opening 10 league games. Pre-Christmas United lost just twice, winning a staggering 14 of their 19 games.
A 2-0 defeat at Old Trafford between Christmas and New Year proved the first real stutter, with Sir Alex Ferguson’s side then winning by a single goal at St James’ Park in March. “I had chances, we had chances in the game, but we just couldn’t score,” Ferdinand says, his brow unable to conceal the hurt that still lies within. “They had the one chance and scored. That was the nature of what happened to us.
“It was weird in the dressing room afterwards. Yes, okay we lost the game, but we were saying to ourselves that the chances that we created against the best team in the league gave us confidence we were doing something right. By rights we should have won that game 4-0. I don't think anyone would have complained.”
A few weeks prior, Tino Asprilla had landed at a snowy Tyneside, his debut coming in a 2-1 victory over Middlesbrough. Trailing at the break, United scored twice following Asprilla’s introduction, Ferdinand providing 78th minute joy for the travelling fans.
Asprilla had just joined his teammates for training so the assumption was he would be eased in. However, Keegan said he wanted him in from the start. “We thought ‘wow’. Keegan was chomping at the bit. Earlier in the season I remember him coming to me and saying, ‘look, we need to get you some help.’ He said that the team thought I’d score every game because I’d started the season off so well and so there was too much reliance on me. A week later there were those pictures of Tino on Tyneside. After Boro we’re all thinking ‘Bloody hell, what have we got here?!’”
For Ferdinand the 1995/96 season was a dream-cum-nightmare. He bettered his tally from the year before by one, finishing with 25 Premier League goals (29 in all competitions). He was named PFA Players’ Player of the Year, and the North-East Football Writers Association Player of the Year.
But the title. Oh, the title. A 12-point lead over Manchester United became a four-point deficit. “We played free-flowing football on the front foot all the time,” Ferdinand recalls. That’s what got us 12 points clear, but when we lost the first three points, we never really pulled each other about and said, ‘listen, this is happening. We've got to make sure it doesn't happen again’.
“We started to bring thought into it. I think if you bring thought into any sport and you don't do it instinctively, there's a delay in everything that you do. That was probably what disrupted us more than anything else.”
Might a Roy Keane-style character have helped? Ferdinand breaks, pondering his answer. A chicken-and-egg debate follows. Would Keane have been the Keane of his Manchester United days without first winning a few trophies and so setting those standards? It is impossible to reach a firm conclusion, but it is intriguing, nonetheless.
“It's funny because every team that you see that's not winning, the first thing people say is that they ain't got any characters,” Ferdinand offers. “And you go, ‘hang on a minute, that's the team that was top of the league last year. That's the team that for 90% of the season were top of the league. Same players, but now you're saying they've got no character?’”
What Ferdinand certainly had was supply, Ginola and Keith Gillespie providing a concierge service Claridge’s would approve of. “For a centre-forward like myself it was a dream,” Ferdinand tells newcastleunited.com.
“One thing I used to say to them is never, ever look for me in the box. Just put it in there and I'll try and get on the end of it, because if you're trying to look for me, you're trying to be too precise. Put the ball in the box, I'll go and attack it.
“Keegan said in pre-season that he’d bought who he felt was the best header of the ball in the league and it was their job to supply the crosses. I can’t complain with the service that I got.”
Ferdinand was indeed formidable in the air, but, as with all elite level skills, it did not just happen. Practice. Practice. Practice. Plus, there was a desire to dispel a myth he was told.
As a kid a coach once said to him that “young black boys don’t head the ball, they don’t want to head the ball,” he explains. “I made it my duty to prove this fella wrong. At QPR I had quite a few coaches that worked with me, but there was a fella in particular called Roger Cross, the reserve team manager.
“Day in, day out, training would finish, and he’d say, ‘where are you going? You said you wanted to learn how to head the ball. Come on then.’ I'd go with him and balls would rain in from both sides. We’d work on contact. Roger was an old centre-forward back in the day and he could head a ball as well. He and I would have competitions, and to begin with he would normally beat me. But in the end, I got to a stage where I was beating him. It became like meat and drink to me.”
As he reflects Ferdinand’s shoulders visibly relax and his face brightens. A happy place, Sir Les? “Very happy times because do you know what? Football's all about learning. You can't better yourself by not being on the training pitch, by doing the repetitions, doing the work. That’s what it was all about.
“Sports science has become a major part of football and what sports science does in a lot of instances is say, ‘right, okay, you've been out on your feet for 90 minutes or two hours, for a training session, so you’ve got to come off your feet now.’ People are just not doing those practices anymore because the work was after training. If I hadn't been allowed to do what Roger Cross was doing with me, I'd have never been able to head the ball in the way that I was able to.”
Ferdinand, as most expected, made England’s squad for Euro ’96 but played not one minute. Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham started all five games, with Robbie Fowler Terry Venables’ preferred forward option from the bench.
“It was a difficult summer for me,” Ferdinand admits. “We’d just lost out on the league, I was voted PFA Players’ Player of the Year, which was a real honour, but then to go with England and not play a minute… I don't think there is any other country in the world where that would have happened.
“I think me and Terry had a clash of personalities,” Ferdinand offers when asked why he thinks that was. Venables was appointed in January 1994, but Ferdinand featured in just four of his 23 games, all friendlies and with just one start. That was despite Ferdinand scoring 49 league goals and providing 15 assists in between August 1994 and May 1996.
Ferdinand realised his England prospects were bleak under Venables when he was left out of the 1995 Umbro International Tournament. Sheringham (18 goals) and Stan Collymore (22 goals) were both chosen despite scoring fewer than Ferdinand (24) the previous season.
“I was just left out of it - I wasn't told,” Ferdinand explains. “It was the late Doug Ellis who told me when I was in Barbados on the end-of-season tour. That’s how I found out. I then went to Newcastle and started the season on fire, with all the journalists saying, ‘how come Les Ferdinand is not in the squad?’
“England wasn't really a good time for me. I always felt like I was on trial again. If I didn't score, my opportunity was gone. Whereas Alan went 12 games without scoring, but it was never seen as his last chance. If I didn't score in the game, I felt I wasn't going to get another chance. I was disappointed that I didn't play more games for England.”
Following England’s semi-final defeat to Germany, Shearer joined Newcastle. The rest of the squad were in Singapore at the time. “We trained in the morning, and he was coming on the later flight. Keegan said to me, ‘I want you and Alan to go out and do a session.’ I went, ‘I did one this morning’. He goes, ‘yeah, I just want you to have a run with Alan.’”
Ferdinand is chuckling as he explains Keegan’s reasoning. “He said it was to get to know each other, but we’d just spent the summer together. I knew Alan and Alan knew me.”
Keegan, though, was insistent. “Terry McDermott and Arthur Cox took us out. I said to Alan, ‘you know I'm only out here because they want me to get to know you’ and he started laughing. He said, ‘look Les, I just want to thank you for allowing me to have the number nine shirt’ and that was it and bang, we've been pals ever since.”
The pair shared 41 goals in the 1996/97 season. “There was a healthy rivalry,” Ferdinand recalls. “We took the piss out of each other a lot. Everyone else took the piss out of us and we took the piss out of them. It was just part of the banter that went on in the dressing room.
“It wasn't a case of, ‘Alan's coming. He's got the number nine. I've got the hump now.’ One of the things I've always tried to do is take my ego out of everything. We were there for the benefit of Newcastle and we wanted to be part of Newcastle winning.”
Alas, United finished second again, although at least qualified for the Champions League owing to the competition’s expansion. But with Keegan having been replaced by Kenny Dalglish mid-season, uncertainty over Ferdinand’s future swirled.
He was looking to buy a place, having spent his first two Tyneside years renting from Andy Cole. He asked the club for reassurance, and they said, “‘no, no, no, everything's okay’”. But his agent kept receiving calls to say Newcastle were willing to listen to offers. “He told me they needed to raise X amount of money, they were getting offers for me and they were willing to listen to offers for anyone.”
That summer Dalglish signed a young Jon Dahl Tomasson, and it was he, not Ferdinand, who partnered Shearer during United’s pre-season opener against PSV. Tomasson scored twice and the noi
se grew louder. Two games later, all three started against Birmingham City at St Andrew’s. After the game, Ferdinand gave his shirt to a delighted supporter.
“The rumours were that I was saying bye to the fans because I gave my shirt away.” Dalglish questioned him about it and Ferdinand said, “’I give my shirt away nearly every game, no one says anything about it so all of a sudden, it's a problem today?’”
Dalglish was due to meet the board a few days later. He told Ferdinand he would inform the suits that he didn’t want to lose him, but early the next week Ferdinand received a call saying a bid had been accepted. Before the transfer was complete, Shearer fractured his ankle at Goodiso
n Park. “I got a call saying Newcastle wanted to speak to me. But I always remember my agent had told Newcastle that I didn’t want to leave and someone at the club turned around and told him, ‘You don't always get what you want in life.’”
That phrase lit roaring flames in Ferdinand and proved terminal to United’s chances of keeping him. “I understand how football works, how the industry works,” he begins. “I’d had two years, scored 50 goals and they're being offered the same money that they paid for me, and if they felt they could invest that money and bring someone else that could do better than what I could, I totally understand. I wasn't begrudging of that - I was just begrudging of the words that were used.”
But for that remark, Ferdinand would likely have returned north when the club tried to persuade him to stay. Instead, he admits he “probably made a decision based on pride rather than what was the best thing for my career at the time.
“I supported Tottenham as a boy and still do, so I've lived the dream of playing for the team that I supported. I knew there'd been a lot go on at Spurs in the last few years and Alan Sugar sold it to me great. He knew where Spurs were and knew what he was trying to do. He told me, ‘It’s people like you that I need to sign to be able to do what I want to do’.
“I'd gone from someone who was basically rejecting me to someone who was going, ‘you're going to be part of what we're building here.’ That appealed to me. That matters in life. Wherever you go in life you want to feel wanted.”
Despite the circumstances of his departure, Ferdinand still has a giant black and white soft spot. At Wembley in March, he was on Sky Sports duty as United claimed the Carabao Cup. He barely tried to retain his professionalism.
“I celebrated. There was no chance of me staying neutral! Then I was invited back to go on stage at the Town Moor celebration. Oh mate, to see the mass of Newcastle fans, the black and white covering the Moor and the roads leading up to the celebrations… it was great to be part of.
“There was a little bit of jealousy in me… no, jealousy is the wrong word. There was a bit of envy in me. The group of players that I played with, we wanted to be the ones to bring that to the fans. But to see those players do it, I was delighted for them and the supporters.”
