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The most traumatic season in Newcastle United’s history could still have a fairytale ending after Alan Shearer, the club’s record goalscorer, took over the managerial reins St James’ Park last night. The former England captain has agreed to assume control of his home-town team until the end of a season and has eight matches to save them from relegation.

Shearer, 38, who will be presented to the media tomorrow, has taken over on a temporary basis, starting with the match at home to Chelsea on Saturday. Newcastle are eighteenth in the Barclays Premier League, two points adrift of safety. The hope will be that a successful conclusion to the campaign will herald a longer stay and the start of a new era at the club.

Iain Dowie will join Shearer's coaching staff although Chris Hughton, who has been the acting first-team coach in Joe Kinnear’s absence, and Colin Calderwood will remain at the club. Dowie and Shearer played together at Southampton and have remained close friends ever since.

While Shearer, who has been working as a pundit for the BBC, has made no secret of his desire to enter management, he has been critical of Mike Ashley’s tenure at Newcastle and his appointment represents a coup for the sportswear manufacturer, whose ownership of the club has been riddled with controversy. It was Kevin Keegan’s departure as manager in early September, after a dispute over player recruitment, that plunged Newcastle into the crisis that they are still confronting.

Protests by fans led Ashley to attempt to sell the club, while the arrival of Kinnear in an interim capacity as manager could not detract from the lingering sense of instability. Ashley will hope that Shearer’s return will galvanise a club that has been in danger of tearing itself apart.

Shearer scored 206 goals in 395 games for Newcastle over ten years after rejecting the chance to join Manchester United in 1996 and instead switching to St James’ Park for £15 million, then a world-record transfer fee.

With Dennis Wise, whose powerful role as executive director (football) was the source of Keegan’s dispute with Ashley, set to leave his position this summer, Kinnear, who underwent triple heart bypass surgery in February, may “move upstairs” to replace Wise in the summer.

It is not a strategy that comes without risk. With no previous managerial experience, Shearer, who retired as a player three years ago, represents an unknown quantity, although he is young enough to have appeared alongside the likes of Michael Owen, Steve Harper, Steven Taylor and Nicky Butt in a black-and-white shirt. His character and reputation are such that he will immediately command the respect of a fractured dressing-room.