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THE WEEKENDER #12 - A sheet metal workers son from Gosforth! This month is the 30th anniversary of Alan Shearer signing for Newcastle United! Shearer!!!? Alan Shearer’s abilities as goal-scoring centre-forward were established as a result of his success at Blackburn Rovers where he scored 130 goals in 171 games. Rovers had paid a British record of £3.6m to take him from Southampton in 1992. He began the 1992/93 season with two goals against Crystal Palace but ended up missing half of his first full season after snapping his right anterior cruciate ligament in December 1992. It was to become a recurring theme but, despite this, he still managed 16 goals in the 21 games he did play. The 1993/94 season saw Shearer blossom as a goal scorer, notching 31 goals in 40 games and winning the Football Writer’s Association Footballer of the Year award. He continued this rate in 1994/95 (34 goals) and 1995/96 (31 goals). He followed it up with a stellar tournament at the Euro finals in 1996, scoring 5 goals and winning the Golden Boot award. It was at this juncture that Blackburn indicated that they might be prepared to sell their talisman at the top of the market. The transfer frenzy eventually boiled down to Newcastle United or Manchester United competing for his signature. It was later stated by the ManU chairman, Martin Edwards, that Blackburn Rovers refused to let him go to Old Trafford, so on 30 July 1996 Kevin Keegan signed Alan Shearer for Premier League Runners-up Newcastle United for a world record transfer fee of £15m, the equivalent of £222m in 2023, taking into account football inflation (higher than ordinary inflation). Neymar’s transfer from Barca to PSG was the equivalent of £198m. That’s how big this transfer was. The return of the prodigal at SJP was celebrated by an unveiling behind the Leazes End. Who can forget Alan Robson’s over-excited introduction as he was presented Shearer to thousands of joyful Geordies? I can’t. And believe me, I’ve tried… Shearer asked for and received the Number 9 shirt. He joined Les Ferdinand, the previous number 9 in probably the best attacking line up Newcastle United had seen since the 1950s. Shearer finished top scorer in the PL with 25 goals in 31 matches - a groin injury forced him to miss seven games. I remember his home debut against Wimbledon where we struggled to break down a team only interested in defence. Halfway through the second half we were awarded a free-kick to the left of the penalty area facing the Leazes. Up stepped Shearer to curl a beauty into the top corner. He was up and running, literally, with his hand raised in that familiar goals celebration (now celebrated in a statue behind the Milburn stand). The highlight of the season in terms of his performance came in a home game v Leicester City where a late hat-trick saw him lead United to a 4-3 win from a 1-3 deficit with just 15 minutes to play. It was Boys’ Own stuff. Second place allowed the club to qualify for the Champions League coinciding with the final day relegation of sunderland and middlesbrough. Laugh? Fuck, yeah! Unfortunately that was probably the high spot of Alan’s career for a few years as injury struck once again with ankle ligament damage picked up in a pre-season friendly at Goodison Park. The timing could not have been worse as the club had just agreed to sell Les Ferdinand to Spurs for £6m. The directors had demanded a high profile sale to keep the City sweet after the club was launched as a PLC. The demand was one of the reasons Special K left but it meant that when Shearer was injured we were forced to play recent midfield signing Jon-Dahl Tommasson in an unfamiliar central attacking role to try to fill in aa a striker in Shearer’s absence. It didn’t work out well and damaged the Dane’s career at SJP. In the end the club finished 13th and, although they had a relatively fortunate run to the FA Cup Final, their weaknesses were exposed by Arsenal in the final who cruised to a 2-0 victory. And this is one of the downsides of Shearer’s transfer. He cost so much that it meant the club were strapped for cash when it came to other areas of the team. New manager Kenny Dalgish had to shop in the bargain basement for players who could step in when Shearer was injured - Ian Rush and John Barnes spring to mind. None of the Gosforth lad’s fault of course but it very much looked as if the club had over-stretched in bringing Shearer in on such an inflated fee, particular when we already had a centre-forward who scored 50 goals in 84 appearances, an average of 0.6 goals every game (and he wasn’t on penalties). Shearer scored 206 in 404 games, an average of 0.5 goals every game. Obviously, Alan Shearer maintained his scoring prowess over a much longer period but one can’t help but imagine an alternative history where Keegan doesn’t sign Shearer but maybe goes for Tim Flowers and Colin Hendry at Blackburn Rovers instead, making the side much more difficult to penetrate while retaining a high class attack, which by then also included Tino Asprilla. One trump card Shearer had was his loyalty - he stayed when he didn’t have to. We have bitter recent experience of our heroes leaving, so his loyalty should be celebrated. A cynic might wonder why he stayed and come up with a variety of reasons - he couldn’t get a better salary elsewhere, Newcastle were challenging for trophies for a large part of his Newcastle career, he had a team built around him to cover the fact that his mobility reduced over the years, he retained his first team place, Ruud Gullit aside, when his goals started to dry up towards the end of his career. Did Bobby Robson try to transfer him to Liverpool? Was that a part of the reason Robson was peddled and bluffer Souness brought in? Who knows? All, some or none of these rumours may be true. What is indisputable is that Shearer broke Jackie Milburn’s record in Boys Own fashion, scoring his 201st goal for Newcastle into the Gallowgate. Also indisputable is the fact that he holds the record for the number of Premier League goals scored - 260. Of these he scored 112 goals for Blackburn (in138 games) at an average of 0.8 goals per game and 148 Premier League goals for us at 0.5 goals per game. I think it’s fair to say that Blackburn had Shearer during his peak, scoring a rate unchallenged until the arrival of Erling Haaland at Man City. However, we had him for longer and he scored some very important goals for us. The goal against Sheffield United at Old Trafford in 1998 that took us back to Wembley and the two against Spurs in 1999, again at Old Trafford, when he repeated the feat, spring to mind. Unfortunately he couldn’t repeat the feat at Wembley. Nevertheless Shearer’s record at Newcastle was pretty impressive. 1996/97: 40 games, 28 goals - 0.7 per game 1997/98: 23 games, 7 goals - 0.3 per game 1998/99: 40 games, 21 goals - 0.53 per game 1999/00: 50 games, 30 goals - 0.6 per game 2000/01: 23 games, 7 goals - 0.3 per game 2001/02: 46 games, 27 goals - 0 59 per game 2002/03: 48 games, 25 goals - 0.52 per ganr 2003/04: 51 games, 28 goals - 0.55 per game 2004/05: 43 games, 19 goals - 0.45 per game 2005/06: 41 games, 14 goals - 0.34 per game To rmaintain such a level of consistent scoring over the years is a remarkable feat, given the number of injuries he suffered and the way he had to change his game as injuries took their toll. Was he worth paying £15m and persuading the club to set up the team to effectively service one man? Maybe not, but he was an incredible force up front and it wasn’t just scoring goals. Just think of how he held the ball up to allow teammates to get up to him, how opposition corners always seemed to find his head at the near post, how he refused to give in even when his body was telling him otherwise. Maybe we kept him a season or two longer than we should have to help him take Milburn’s record. Maybe one or two players suffered as a result of his apparent immovability out of the Number 9 shirt as he chased down Milburn’s record. These are all impossible to say. But Shearer’s record speaks for itself in ranking him as one of the greatest, if not the greatest, centre-forward in the club’s history. He really was a phenomenon. WALLACE WILSON TRUE FAITH - this is the last in our summer series of THE WEEKENDER. Thanks to all who’ve contributed and added comments and thoughts as below. As well as to everyone who’s read the column as well. We’ll be back with our matchday pocket rocket THE SPECIAL for Liverpool at home. Cheers.