Kinnear denounces 'Wimbledon` claims

Joe Kinnear has come out and denied claims that he`ll turn Newcastle into Wimbledon Mark II. Praising his earlier Tottenham football schooling, JFK reckons that using NUFC players to the best of their ability doesn`t include a 50 yard punt aimed towards a 5ft 7 Michael Owen`s nappa. Joe said:

'I grew up with push and run. I've got all my qualifications in football, and have a degree - I've studied for many, many years. I was always a great believer in the management of Bill Nicholson at Spurs. Chris Hughton will tell you this, as well.

Bill wouldn't allow you to kick the ball long. We were always push and run, and give and go. We were just a team that played total football all over the pitch. When I went to Wimbledon we started to do that, but we didn't have the quality of everybody else so we had to mix it. We had to do that to survive.

We were getting from lower divisions, but there were about 11 of them that left as internationals. I had a lot of internationals playing under me. John Fashanu was more of an old fashioned footballer who did use his head as long as we got good deliveries into the box. We were also deadly from set-plays, and we also got tagged with that.

Today in football, if Ronaldo or Beckham scores from a free-kick, it's acceptable. If it was crossed into the box and somebody out-jumped somebody and headed it in, like Fash did, which he did on numerous occasions, we got a lot of naughty comments.

Some of that was because people were envious that we'd got our bunch of players that had come up from lower divisions and were keen to prove themselves in the top division. At one stage were lying in third at Christmas in the Premier League and putting everybody's noses out of place. I have no regrets at all. I got to the semi-final of the League Cup and the FA Cup in the same season. There was a lot of things that were said about us at Wimbledon that we just had to live with.'

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