A brace from Michael Owen and Mark Viduka provided the margin of victory in Newcastle’s 2-0 home win over Fulham earlier today, the hosts’ first win in 14 league matches, as well as the first in ten tries for new manager Kevin Keegan. “Keegan cuts a far more mellow figure than during his first managerial incarnation on Tyneside,” claims the Guardian’s Louise Taylor, “a period punctuated by a few prickly moments.” Apparently, one of those moments occurred on Friday.

Publicly at least, it takes a lot to get his gander up these days but there was a hint of hackles rising yesterday when the fact that he had not attended a live match during the three years between leaving Manchester City and joining Newcastle was aired once again. “You should do a survey among managers asking how many live games they go to?” Keegan retorted. “Ask Arsène Wenger how many live games he watches? I don’t know the answer but it would be interesting.

“I watched an awful lot of games on television and I don’t think it has taken me a while to get up to speed,” added Keegan. “Until we win a game people can fire anything at you. But no one was firing my lack of watching live games at me the last time I was here and I’d just spent seven years playing golf in Marbella.”When I came back this time, I knew all about the players; I knew all about the players at Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal. There are the odd one or two at Wigan and places like that where you have to do your homework but so do some other managers. There is no lack of knowledge on my part – and I also have tremendous knowledge around me.”

There could be a great campaign for Sky HD in here somewhere, but there’s not much point in asking Wegner how many live matches he’s seen over the past 3 seasons. All you have to do is look at the old Arsenal fixture lists.