Robson still master of the human touch

It has been a week of reflection for Sir Bobby Robson. On Friday he attended the funeral of Ron Gray, the chief scout who performed a Baden-Powell of a job for him at Ipswich, helping to assemble his first enduringly successful side. "Ron brought in players like Brazil, Burley, Johnny Wark, Butcher, Beattie," Robson mused. "All those fantastic kids we got at Ipswich were there because of Ron."

It seemed fitting in the circumstances that Sir Bobby, the great Peter Pan of football management, should head off on the road back to Ipswich also casting his mind back through the years to gauge the value of his latest success, the one he gained on Wednesday night with the youthful side he is building on Gray's native Tyneside. "Ooh, I would say it ranks as one of the best victories I have had in charge of a team," Robson ruminated, the day after Newcastle's 1-0 win against Juventus. "And I've had some crackers in my time.

"At Ipswich we beat Barcelona at home twice, and Real Madrid. We also won at Saint-Etienne when they had their great side. And when I was at Barcelona we won away against Fiorentina, a really good Fiorentina team, Batistuta and all. They were big wins, and so was this. We beat a crack team. It was a big scalp, one of the biggest I have been involved with."

It was, in fact, the biggest scalp Sir Bobby had taken in the biggest European competition of all. Those wins with Ipswich against Barcelona, Real and Saint-Etienne were in the Uefa Cup and the Cup-Winners' Cup. That win in Florence with Barcelona was in the Cup-Winners' Cup. Up to Wednesday night Robson had won only six matches in the European Cup, guiding PSV Eindhoven to victories against Besiktas and HJK Helsinki (twice) and helping Porto to overcome Anderlecht, Werder Bremen and Aalborg. Success against Juventus was his first against one of the European big boys in the European big league.

Robson did, of course, win the Uefa Cup with Ipswich in 1981 and the Cup-Winners' Cup with Barcelona in 1997. But in the Champions' League only once has he ventured beyond the group stages: back in 1994, when he took a Porto team he had inherited in mid-season through to the semi-finals. His chances of making progress this time round remain on the slim side too. Despite the high of Wednesday night, Newcastle are still bottom of Group E, with three points from four games. "We need another big performance at home to Dynamo Kiev on Tuesday," Robson said.

It was certainly a big Newcastle performance against Juventus. Andy Griffin's goal might have come with a helping hand from Gianluigi Buffon but Juventus would have been heavily beaten had their goalkeeper not otherwise been in such world-class form. Newcastle had no Bellamy or Dyer and a back four playing together for the first time with an average age of 22. Not that it was a victory without its problems for their manager.

Having been restricted to a substitute role for a fifth match in succession, Hugo Viana vented his frustration in the Portuguese press. "I didn't come here to sit on the bench," the 19-year-old midfielder was quoted as saying. "It's a situation I can't see continuing." News of the outburst clearly came as a disappointment to Robson, who had described Viana in his post-match press conference as "an Eddystone Lighthouse – he just shines."

It did not come entirely as a surprise, though. "I know Hugo is a little bit discontented because he is not playing regularly," Robson confessed. "I have spoken to him about it and made him aware that he has to be more patient. The Portuguese word is espera: wait. He understands it. I know I have a young player on my hands who is good enough to play in our first team, who is good enough to play in other first teams at a high level. It is a problem I will have to resolve by developing a good relationship with him and by keeping him going."

It has been ever thus in 35 years in the management game for Bobby Robson: getting good players and keeping them happy. "I'll tell you how we got Kevin Beattie," he said, in the midst of a fulsome tribute to his old chief scout. "Liverpool got him down there first. So he gets off the train at Lime Street. There's nobody there to meet him. He's 15. Never been out of Carlisle in his life. Hasn't got a penny in his pocket. Doesn't know what to do, so he crosses the bridge and gets the train back home. Shankly said, 'If he hasn't got the brains to find his way from Lime Street to Anfield we don't want to sign him.'

"We get a phone call about him, so I say to Ron, 'Meet him at King's Cross station. Don't miss him. If you miss him you've lost your job.' So he goes down on a Friday morning, meets him off the train. The kid's wearing an open-neck shirt, not got a penny on him, just a brown bag with a pair of football boots in it. I gave him some shirts and ties. You should have seen him.

"The next day he plays for the reserves against Fulham and Ron gets straight on the phone. 'This lad'll be in the first team at 19,' he says. He was wrong. He was in the first team at 17."