I always thought a key point was that Kevin was so self assured in his early days here and that he didn't give a monkey's when others questioned his decisions. This seemed to change during 95-96 season somewhat.
I remember there was negativity about Beresford (something about him having a dodgy knee or failing a medical) and Bracewell signing and Kev just plowed on through . Same with the signing of Cole there were people within football who were like "What ? He's spending how much on him ?" and Keegan was "like this lad's got it" . Even the signing of Beardsley, voices within the club weren't happy about that signing because of his age and Kevin was adamant. You can look at the sale of Andy Cole as a larger example that KK was completely sure of himself.
Then there definitely seemed to be a change of Special K's mentality and he started listening to the media and the naysayers. To me this started with the signing of David Batty which seemed to be on the back of people saying that we couldn't win the title playing the way we were. Then over time and with the loss of the title this seemed to validate the criticism's of him with a lot of people and perhaps in Kevin's mind. Culminating in when he left England and saying he tactically wasn't up to it.
We'll never know for sure whether things would have turned out differently if Keegan had done differently, but I've since been inclined to think that Clough made the right call. Tino was a good player all right, but he wasn't the player we needed. Including him meant that the Sir Les - Pedro partnership, which had been so fruitful, was disrupted, with Beardsley being pushed out right. The weak link in the side, and the player that should have been replaced, was Gillespie. We needed a wide player.
Didn't Gary Neville snap him in half around January time with a late tackle and he missed the 2nd half of the season? As I remember he was doing great and then when he was gone we were worse because the other could just focus on Ginola.
I've checked this out, and he didn't actually miss all that many games in the second half of the season. He did end up on the subs bench quite a bit though.
I think Gillespie was a more limited player than Keegan had at first thought. He'd scored a good goal against us the previous season, and I think that influenced Keegan's thinking. But Premiership defenders sussed him out after a while and he became less effective.
In the first half of the season, that team had a beautiful balance to it, with Sir Les leading the line, Pedro and Rob Lee creating things down the centre, Ginola and Gillespie down the flanks, and Clark acting as the anchor man. Batty for Clark was a good exchange, but as I said in other post, Tino's arrival forced a change in the set up. If Tino had been a wide player it would have worked, but he was a central striker and the whole balance of the attack was disrupted.
