Keeping Circus on the road cut manager's room for manoeuvre

Ever since Dennis Wise walked into St James' Park 12 days after Kevin Keegan in January, a question has been asked as to why Keegan acceded to this when he would never have done so before? One answer, widely believed, is that Keegan needs money to fund his business, the Soccer Circus enterprise.

It is thought that Keegan signed a contract at Newcastle worth £3m per annum across the three-and-a-half years he agreed to at St James', which is a huge sum even in these days of inflated football salaries and transfer fees. That would obviously be an attraction to the 57-year-old, though undoubtedly so too was the opportunity to return to St James', a stadium that Keegan in his first managerial spell had helped transform into a modern English football monument.

But the £60,000 a week would offset some of the losses in the Glasgow-based Soccer Circus scheme, a prototype entertainment complex Keegan hopes to roll out across the country and abroad.

Related articles

• Newcastle keep quiet amid fury
• Keegan 'left with no choice' but to walk out on Newcastle
• Toon army vent fury over Keegan's departure
• Day of reckoning for Barton at FA adds to St James' problems

Years in preparation, Soccer Circus opened in September 2006 and Keegan himself hinted at the extent of the debts on a trip back in March.

With accounts showing a pre-tax loss of £1m up to April 2007, Keegan said: "If you want to look upon this as a place that will make a profit in its first year and a half, well it won't do that. There is £4m worth of stuff behind the scenes here, so you won't get that back in a year, you'll get that back over 10 years."

Prior to succeeding Sam Allardyce, Keegan worked there every day, answering the telephone and serving tea in the canteen. The impression was not of a business about to boom, but it needed to. When The Independent interviewed Keegan there 18 months ago, Keegan touched on his personal finances.

"For the last 10 years I've been putting my earnings to one side, paying people to work full time on research and development," Keegan said. He then added that into Soccer Circus he has put "almost everything we've got, me and my family."

The idea that Keegan might need money is surprising given that he has been rich and famous for over 30 years and, in his own description, is "entrepreneurial".

When he joined Hamburg from Liverpool in 1977 his salary made him the richest player in the richest league in Europe. At Newcastle in 1992, before becoming manager, one of his conversations with Freddie Fletcher was about buying the club, not managing it.

That was the scale of his wealth – even when he resigned from the England job in 2000, Keegan said he could have hung on, waited to be sacked and picked up £2m in compensation.

He forfeited that, yet Keegan knows the importance of money. As he says on page four of his autobiography: "Hard currency is always useful, whoever you are and however comfortable you may be."

Mike Ashley would surely agree.