Soccer:Newcastle United announced Kevin Keegan's second coming as manager last night, a move so unexpected that it simultaneously captured Geordie imaginations and succeeded in taking the football world by surprise.

The large coaching staff assembled by Sam Allardyce, who was sacked last week, were fearing dismissal; Keegan is expected to appoint the former Fulham manager Chris Coleman, who yesterday resigned as Real Sociedad coach, as his assistant and will make Lee Clark the first-team coach. Clark, a former Newcastle and Fulham midfielder, coached at the club last season before recently becoming Glenn Roeder's assistant at Norwich City.

Of the current St James' backroom only Terry McDermott, who worked under Keegan during his first spell in charge from 1992 to 1997, is believed to be safe but Peter Beardsley, one of Keegan's favourite former players, may be given a senior coaching role.

Alan Shearer, widely tipped to succeed Allardyce despite his lack of managerial experience, said he would be willing to join Keegan at St James' Park if approached by the manager. "First, I'm sure he hasn't thought about that yet," said the Match of the Day pundit last night. "If he was to ring I would definitely speak to him. It would be foolish of me not to. They [Newcastle] rang me last week when I was on holiday and said they were looking for experience. It remains an ambition of mine to manage the club."

The former England and Newcastle striker predicted that Keegan's return would have an immediate effect on the north-eastern club.

"The fans have got what they wanted," he said. "They will see a lot of goals, concede a few, but they will be entertained. I hope he does well because I'm a big fan."

Keegan has never lacked a sense of theatre and he took a seat in the directors' box at St James' Park midway through the first half of last night's third-round FA Cup replay with Stoke City, which Newcastle won 4-1, having arrived on Tyneside by helicopter along with Ashley and Chris Mort, the Newcastle chairman.

As they entered the ground by the entrance where, more than a decade earlier, Keegan had stood and explained his decision to sell Andy Cole to Manchester United to angry fans, the re-born Geordie messiah, said: "I'm absolutely delighted to be back."

Before the kick-off, delayed by 15 minutes, Newcastle's players were said to be in a similar state of shock and disbelief. While some were believed to broadly welcome Keegan's return, others including Michael Owen, the England striker who has had his differences with the former national coach, appeared more guarded.

The puzzle is why Keegan has chosen to return. In March last year he said he was content running his Soccer Circus near Glasgow, stressing: "There is more to life than football. I can see football for what it is now."

Yet the abiding memories of Keegan's first era in charge are of players such as David Ginola and Les Ferdinand thrilling neutrals with free-flowing football before surrendering a 12 point lead to Manchester United in the 1996 title race. Last March Keegan reflected: "That Newcastle team was one of the major football successes of the last 20 years; nothing like it will ever happen again." His challenge now is to ensure it somehow does.

As a player between 1982 and 1984, he gave the Newcastle fans 48 goals in 78 games, the highest average of his career. As manager from 1992 to 1997, he presided over 249 league and cup matches, winning 55.4 per cent and drawing 20.1 per cent, the best figures of any manager in the Magpies' history.

Until his first spell as a manager reached its climax with that ill-fated, 12-point lead over Ferguson's Manchester United on January 22nd, 1996, it had been euphoria all the way.

He had been brought back to Newcastle by John Hall, who harboured the vision of developing Newcastle into a multi-platform sports club to rival Barcelona and Real Madrid and believed he had found the perfect front man.

That era was to end in anticlimax. Ferguson's team remorselessly overhauled Newcastle's lead to win the 1995-96 title, with Keegan's capture of Faustino Asprilla, the sporadically brilliant but hideously infuriating Colombian striker, widely blamed as the catalyst and symbol of the sudden decline. There were other disappointments, starting with defeat against United in the following season's Charity Shield.

When Keegan resigned on January 8th, 1997, the team were lying fourth in the Premiership. He had taken them, he said, as far as he could.

• Guardian Service