Brian Viner: Shearer's messiah complex based on simple arrogance

Sources close to Alan Shearer this week suggested that the great man is finally ready to manage Newcastle United and become beleaguered owner Mike Ashley's "priceless get-out-of-jail free card".

To be specific, the source was his old team-mate Rob Lee, who it is rumoured will be offered the job of Secretary of State when Shearer takes over in the Black-and-White House and tries to find a working blend of hawks, doves and magpies. Geordies will have to forgive me for facetiously confusing the stewardship of their beloved club with the American presidency; they know that one job involves nothing less than the future well-being of the planet, while Barack Obama is welcome to the other one.

In the meantime, Lee's declaration on his mate's behalf is a worrying development on all sorts of levels. I think I might just about be able to stumble through Saturday nights without Shearer's forensic analyses on Match of the Day, but I'm troubled by the apparent certainty in his camp that a) the job will be his as soon as he clicks his fingers and that b) he will succeed where so many others, with so much more managerial experience, have failed. Of course, arrogance and self-belief are useful qualities in football, both on the park and in the dug-out. But pride also comes before a fall, and there is more than a hint that Shearer, though an intelligent fellow, has come to believe in the messianic status accorded him by the fans. Messiah he might yet prove to be, but he has already broken rule number one in the messiah's handbook, which is to show a little humility.

Still, it is not without precedent for a great player to go directly into management and administer smelling salts to a sleeping giant. There is even an example just down the coast, although what's significant about Roy Keane is not so much that he took over at Sunderland when they seemed about to plummet into the third tier of English football, but that the Stadium of Light, and before it Roker Park, were not where he was idolised as a player. Shearer won't be haunted by the spectre of failure if and when he does take over at Newcastle, but he should still reflect on what it might feel like one day to hear the Gallowgate End resounding to cries of "Shearer out!"

All that said, I'm as romantic as the next man, and I like the idea of Shearer parking his Baby Bentley in the manager's space outside St James' Park. What sticks just a little in the craw is the way he has seemingly used the media, through Lee, to agitate for it. He was the least media-friendly of players and even though he is now happy to take the BBC shilling he remains (as I can testify) a singularly ungenerous interviewee. As a sportsman with a downright schizophrenic relationship with the media, though, he's in illustrious company. Nick Faldo this week used the very people whom he once publicly thanked from the heart of his bottom to press a claim for another tilt at the Ryder Cup captaincy.

He surely won't be given the chance, partly because there are too many others yet to be honoured and partly because he made too many errors two months ago in Kentucky. Faldo's record as a player remains exemplary but as a team manager he was found seriously wanting. And so back to Shearer. I don't know when he last enjoyed a game of Monopoly, but he should be aware that once you've played a get-out-of-jail-free card, the next stop but one is often Water Works.

Book hell prompts heavenly response

One of the pleasures of a sporting hack's life is communing with his peers, and the fondest memory I have of covering the Open Championship at Carnoustie in 2007 does not concern the golf at all, but of tramping along inside the ropes with Brough Scott of 'The Sunday Telegraph' and Lynne Truss of 'The Times'.

I told them I had recently suffered the indignity of a book-signing where I, sitting beside a vast pile of my books, equalled the number of people in the queue and Lynne tried hard to make me feel better, but was slightly stymied by the stratospheric sales figures of her bestseller 'Eats Shoots and Leaves'. Brough, by contrast, gave me a heart-warming and hilarious account of a signing of his in Cheltenham, which attracted nobody at all until his Number One Fan arrived from Bristol, and nobody else after she had gone. Anyway, I was invited to the launch party of his latest book 'Of Horses and Heroes' this week, and was regrettably unable to attend. I hope somebody did, and that the book thrives. It is the story of his 60-year love affair with racing, and it is splendid.

Ecclestone's wit

Yesterday's news of Bernie Ecclestone's impending divorce, and details of his vast fortune, reminded me that I once asked him if the rumour was true that he was the mastermind behind The Great Train Robbery. I thought he might have me thrown out of his office for insolence. Instead he said: "It wasn't me. There wasn't enough money on that train."

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