Never give up, never give in - Dennis Wise loves to prove fans, managers and pundits wrong. He has been doing it all his career. He is a small man with a huge heart, which is why I cannot figure out this move.

Wise leaves Leeds United with the job half-done. He was in charge when they went down and the Wise I know would desperately want to be the man who takes them back up. He is not the sort to leave unfinished business.

Leeds are fifth in Coca-Cola League One and would be top without the 15-point penalty handed down by the Football League for breaching insolvency rules. It is likely that Wise would have led them to promotion and with momentum, stabilising finances and big attendances, there would have been no reason why Leeds could not have pushed for successive promotions.

Even now they get crowds of more than 30,000, so I cannot figure out why he would want to abandon that project. When you have the qualities to be a top manager, why settle for life behind the scenes, especially aged only 41?

Perhaps there are a number of factors, some related to Leeds, some more personal. Dennis is from the first generation of really wealthy players. And while plenty of his contemporaries have dabbled in management, not all have stayed.

Unlike a Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsène Wenger, Dennis is wealthy enough not to need to work. He chooses to. When he was manager at Millwall, he would leave at 6am to get to the training ground. Some days, he wouldn’t get home until 11pm. Faced with such stress and knowing it is optional, perhaps he has decided to put his family first by taking a less demanding role.

Still, Wise is his own man. To me, he is not the sort to be content with a backstage role – he is a leader, not an assistant. Is there more to this than the pull of the Barclays Premier League, the potential salary increase and the chance to spend more time with his family? Certainly, if all goes well, he is putting himself in the frame to succeed Kevin Keegan. There are no guarantees, especially with Alan Shearer lurking, but clubs are increasingly trying to plan for the future.

I have known Wise well over the years. I played with him at Chelsea and we had a lot of laughs – and a few arguments, usually trivial stuff. He does not like to lose, whether at football, cards or chess. Sometimes the chess pieces would go flying.

Wise, like Keegan, has previous for spitting out the dummy if he does not get his way. It is a sign of their passion. Wise is driven. He hauled himself to the top, from being let go as an apprentice at Southampton to climbing the pyramid with Wimbledon to becoming an England player.

When Chelsea invited some former players to their training ground last year, Wise was there with Gustavo Poyet, his assistant at the time, taking notes as José Mourinho took a session. “Didn’t know you could spell ‘free kick’,” I joked. But he is much shrewder and smarter than people give him credit for. He has always been ambitious and a good professional, but I did not see him becoming the type of manager he is – thorough, detailed, very serious about his job and determined to be a success.

He has kept that “them and us” mentality from his Wimbledon days, but he is far more continental than Crazy Gang in his attitude – perhaps that precision and dedication is a bit of the foreign influence rubbing off from his time at Stamford Bridge. So maybe he is a shrewd choice for Newcastle as they adopt a European-style set-up.

It seems an unnatural choice, but that means it is yet another opportunity for Wise to prove the doubters wrong.

Wise words

“Can’t stand the bloke. I don’t see what he would bring, especially as a director of football. That job entails overseeing the academy, etc, and making sure structures are in place throughout the club. Hence it requires some brains and thought processes. What can his little head conjure up?” nufc-forum.com

“No one can deny the great work he’s done at Leeds this season.” nufc-forum.com