For Kevin Keegan, a little ignorance has brought much bliss at Newcastle United. Exiled from the game for three years after his departure from Manchester City, the manager was quick to confess on his return to Tyneside in January that he lacked detailed knowledge of opposing teams, but the benefits that followed have been evident. His players have luxuriated in greater attention.

Ridiculed for admitting that he had not watched a live football match since 2005 and pilloried for declaring that his lack of direct involvement in the sport should not matter, Keegan has been proved correct. While results were slow to follow, the team have put together a sequence of seven matches without defeat, securing their status in the Barclays Premier League and offering promise for the future.

Keegan may not have been familiar with his players, let alone others, but he brought a fresh perspective to the difficult situation he inherited from Sam Allardyce and, having worked at Newcastle in two previous spells, he understood the pressures. Few of his predecessors could say the same, but little has surprised him.

“I told the owner [Mike Ashley] when I took the job here that I knew this club and I knew what was required,” Keegan said. “When I went to Fulham, I couldn't say that; I just knew it had a ground on the side of the Thames and that Johnny Haynes and Jimmy Hill had played there. I didn't know anything about it. But this club I did. I wasn't coming in cold. I'd played for it, I'd managed it before.

“I'd played here when it was quite successful and the only thing we could do was get out of the division below and we did that. And I'd managed it when we went from the division below and could and probably should have won the Premier League. Those things I knew, and that was important.

“What I didn't know was what players I had today. I knew the names, but not what character they'd got and I knew all the top teams, but it was the other ones we were going to be playing - I didn't know all the players, I'll be honest with you, and I was honest enough to say that at the time. I hadn't watched a live game for three years. To me, that's not necessarily a big deal,” he said.

“I don't think Arsène Wenger goes to watch the opposition and I'd watched a lot of games on television. I know all the players in Europe. I know now, having been here for more than three months, that half the targets I'd like are the same people I'd have liked when I was out of the game. I was looking at them and thinking, - Wow, if I was a manager now, that's the sort of player you'd like at your club.'

“Being away from it was not as big a thing as the press made it out to be and then, when things weren't going well, exaggerated it. In some ways it got me focused on what we had here, what we had to work with.”

Richard Dunne is another player who Keegan knows well and Newcastle are hoping that the managerial upheaval at Manchester City will assist their pursuit of the Ireland centre half. Keegan views the 28-year-old, with whom he worked at City, as the ideal candidate to bolster his club's defence.