I was at Joe Kinnear’s infamous Newcastle press conference – he will be sorely missed

Joe Kinnear will go down in Premier League history for delivering a press conference like no other.

After being surprisingly parachuted in to manage Newcastle United by then-club owner Mike Ashley following Kevin Keegan’s abrupt exit, Kinnear’s first formal media activity descended in an X-rated, expletive-ridden rant.

His notorious attack on members of Tyneside press pack, like Telegraph Sport’s former North East sports correspondent, came immediately to mind after his family announced the former Tottenham player had died at the age of 77 after a long illness.

Kinnear’s wife Bonnie revealed to Telegraph Sport in 2021 that he had been living with dementia since 2015 and a statement from his family released on Sunday said: “We are sad to announce Joe passed away peacefully this afternoon surrounded by his family.”

Potty-mouthed Kinnear hit the headlines after he launched an astonishing attack on members of the Tyneside press pack as he tried to stamp his authority on the most unmanageable of clubs.

None of the handful of newspaper journalists who assembled in a nondescript room at the club’s modest Longbenton training ground, as Kinnear’s arrival was announced without any form of fanfare back in 2008, were prepared for what was to come.

The former Wimbledon manager would have known that Keegan would always be a hard act to follow. He would need to launch an extraordinary charm offensive to win over the Toon Army at a time the club was at its most dysfunctional.

But he got off to the worst possible start as it emerged that his first major decision was to allow Newcastle’s dispirited first-team squad to have the day off rather than report for duty, before things went from bad to worse when his aptitude was questioned across the media.