Former Newcastle United striker Les Ferdinand has opened up about his relationship with his former manager Kevin Keegan, calling him "one of the managers I enjoyed playing for the most".
Ferdinand played under Keegan for the Magpies during the 1995/96 season and the first half of the 1996/97 season until Keegan handed in his resignation in January of 1997.
Speaking on BT Sport’s ‘The Premier League Storybook with Jake Humphrey’, Ferdinand reminisced about the players' reaction to Keegan's famous "I would love it if we beat them! Love it!" comment in a post-match interview.
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"I’ll always remember it and going in the next day, obviously it was the talk of the time in terms of everyone saying ‘I'd love it, I'd love it, I'd love it’ copying what Keegan said, but Keegan was always something that wore his heart on his sleeve.
"And as a player, people always want players to wear their heart on their sleeves and show that they care. And I felt, to a man, there wasn't anyone in that dressing room that looked at Keegan and thought he'd lost it. They were all like ‘yeah, we know how he feels because we feel like that.’
"I don't think it was a case of ‘he's lost a psychological battle with Alex Ferguson’, I don't think any of us looked at it like that. We just knew that was he was a passionate man. He wore his heart on his sleeve. He said what he felt. Everybody else made it a big deal."
Ferdinand then went onto explain why Keegan was so special to him and how his personality was so key in engaging players and getting the best out of them.
"He was probably one of the managers I enjoyed playing for the most in terms of the way he was as a person, how he tried to get the best out of people. I would say that tactically, probably not the best manager I had, but he knew he knew the way he wanted his team to play.
"And he knew the type of football he wanted to watch and he knew the type of football that Newcastle United supporters wanted to watch."
Les Ferdinand features in an upcoming episode of ‘The Premier League Storybook with Jake Humphrey’, part of brand new line-up of free podcasts, BT Sport Pods. Visit btsport.com/pods.
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