351-352: Alan Shearer, Newcastle United, Merlin’s Premier League 97 Official Sticker Collection

Today Richard Allinson looks at an icon of English football whose achievements are so impressive that not only did Rich have to reconsider his initial approach for this post but he also doesn’t even mention Grimsby Town. He also doesn’t mention the time today’s subject tried to kick Neil Lennon’s face off and didn’t even get a booking. What a time to be alive. Over to Rich.

When I sat down to write this post the intention was that it was going to be about the joy of goal celebrations. However, on starting my research I couldn’t help think that ol’ Mr Raised Arm warranted a blog post all for himself, so here we go with a look at Alan Shearer. 

Let’s start with his career stats: He scored 321 goals and created 78 others in 569 appearances for Southampton, Blackburn Rovers and Newcastle United. That means on average (if my C grade GCSE maths is correct) he contributed to a goal in every 1.42 games, which is absolutely bonkers, especially considering he played at the top level for 18 years. The three he scored in the Intertoto Cup for Newcastle are clearly the most important, but his 260 Premier League efforts also probably helped his clubs a little bit too. On the international stage he plundered 13 in 12 games for the England U21s and then 30 in 63 full international caps, putting him ninth on the country’s all time top scorers list. This is surprisingly only one ahead of Frank Lampard and three in front of David Platt. He is also only eight ahead of Peter Crouch too, but we’ll save him for the goal celebrations post. With a lot of goals comes a lot of awards, and in his career Shearer won the Premier League with Blackburn which was his only major title, unless you count the u21 Toulon Trophy. So yeah, he won two major titles. On an individual level though he cleaned up to such an extent I’m going to have to go into list format: 

Honorary Freedom of Newcastle; OBE; CBE; Honorary Doctorate of Civil Law x 2; Deputy Lieutenant of Northumberland; Euro ‘96 golden boot; Ballon d’Or third place; FIFA World Player of the Year third place; Premier League Golden Boot x 3; PFA Players’ Player of the Year x 2; Football Writers Association (FWA) Player of the Year; FWA Tribute Award; English Football Hall of Fame; PFA Team of the Century; Newcastle United’s all time highest goal scorer; Premier League highest goal scorer; statue outside St James’ Park. 

All of this and yet Ruud Gullit still dropped him in the Tyne-Wear derby for Paul Robinson who by that point in his career had scored a whopping three in 27 for Darlington. To be fair to Gullit, he has since apologised to Shearer, saying “I am really sorry, I was Dutch, I was young and I was arrogant, I am totally different now - I got it wrong and I apologise.” It was good to find this out because Gullit and Shearer were both childhood heroes of mine and at the time the whole episode did seem rather foolish. No need to apologise for being from Holland though Ruud, it’s a nice place. 

I think it is fair to say that despite his title winning success with Blackburn, Alan Shearer is synonymous with his time in the North East of England at Newcastle United. Once he decided that Blackburn had gone as far as they could and he had informed Jack Walker of his desire to leave Rovers for pastures new, there was no shortage of suitors for his signature and for a long time it appeared that Manchester United had won the race. Famously though, this was not to be the case and in 2019 former Red Devils’ chairman Martin Edwards expanded on the reasons why the move didn’t go through in an interview with NBC Sports show Beyond the Page. When discussing the failed bid, Edwards detailed that Jack Walker didn’t like Manchester United very much and that he didn’t want to sell his prized asset to another Lancastrian club. Also tied into this was the feeling that Shearer was close to Walker and that he didn’t want to upset him by moving to a close rival. A few years later Shearer largely backed up this version of events, but also added the excellent fact that Walker had set an asking price of £15m, or £20m if he was to join Manchester United. Similarly, S’Alex Ferguson explained largely the same story as Edwards when writing in his book on the 1996/97 season, A Will To Win, but added an extra little twist worthy of a Steve Bruce crime novel “... at any rate, there was clearly an undisclosed agenda, and one day I’ll find out what really happened.” Ooooooh. 

Obviously, it was Newcastle United that finally won the transfer tug of war when fellow Magpies legend Kevin Keegan convinced Shearer to move to the North East for a world record £15m. Rather fantastically, the deal was edged to its conclusion whilst the pair waited to watch a Bryan Adams gig in Huddersfield, however, Shearer wasn’t without his reservations when considering the move, particularly around King Kev’s tactics. Writing in his autobiography, Shearer explained “He told me he wanted to play me, Les Ferdinand, Faustino Asprilla, Peter Beardsley and David Ginola in the same attack... Very interesting, I thought... I went to the concert with my mind working overtime. There were many unanswered questions, mainly about Kevin's tactics." I’m sure Shaka Hislop and Darren Peacock probably had similar reservations come 3pm on a Saturday afternoon too in fairness. Ultimately though, the lure of fulfilling a dream and returning back to the club he had supported growing up was too much. As Shearer himself has said, he had returned home, and what a welcoming party he got. On the day he signed for the club, a makeshift stage, complete with giant inflatable bottles of Newcastle Brown Ale, had been erected outside St James’ Park as 20,000 Geordies gathered in the rain ready to welcome their local hero (that was a deliberate Mark Knopfler reference in case anyone was wondering) back to where he belonged - you just couldn’t help but be impressed by it. This kind of unveiling also beats the modern approach of a club adding a gif on Twitter as a way of announcing a transfer too. 

Shearer played in some good sides at Newcastle and he came quite close to achieving his dream of winning silverware with the Magpies, losing in the 1999 FA Cup final and finishing third in the Premier League in the 2002/03 season. During the same period, Manchester United dominated English football winning pretty much everything in sight, however, Shearer maintains that he has no regrets about making the move to Newcastle, saying that if he was faced with the same scenario he would do it all over again. After his playing days were done Shearer was to briefly return to St James’ Park as manager with the club fighting relegation from the Premier League at the end of the 2008/09 season. On his appointment, he explained "It's a club I love and I don't want them to go down. I'll do everything I can to stop that." Ultimately in his eight games in charge he was unable to stop the Magpies’ slide into the Championship after 16 years in the top flight and he stepped away from management at the end of the season. There is always that feeling of ‘never say never’ with Shearer and the manager’s job at Newcastle though, so he might well not be done on that score just yet. 

There is plenty more to say about Alan Shearer  that I don’t have room for here, such as his outstanding performances as he powered England to the brink of Euro ‘96 glory; his almost unique blend of skill and strength on the pitch; his media career; his work for charity that has brought in millions for various causes; and his love of Smoky Bacon crisps. But put short, in a generation of great English striking talent, he was the best of the bunch by far, making him a true icon of English football. And he did it all with one arm in the air. 

Oh and one last thing... SHEARER! SHEARER! SHEARER!