Seven months after quitting as England manager, Manchester City ushered him back into football yesterday amid jubilant scenes and heady predictions of winning the Premiership title. Kevin Keegan has signed a five-year contract with an annual salary of £1.25 million sterling.

On an extraordinary day for the relegated club, the 50-yearold immediately made it clear his time out of the game had not diminished his famed, if occasionally misguided, sense of optimism.

"I'm not going to put a date on it, but we've got to be looking to win the title," he said. "Why not? Anything is achievable. Once you get a momentum going, everyone rowing in the same direction, it can take you beyond the expectations of the biggest optimist anywhere.

"This club has the potential to be one of the top five in the country and, after that, things can get very interesting.

"When we finished as first division champions with Newcastle we put a notice in the programme saying: `Watch out Sir Alex Ferguson, we're after your title.' People laughed then but we damn near got it.

"Newcastle pleasantly surprised people and City can too. I'm not a fool and I have a real chance of success here.

"I want to make sure we are in the premiership by the time we move to our new stadium and also win something in the near future.

"I think this is truly a sleeping giant still and it's my job to turn it round. I'm really looking forward to it. I've missed it. That's why I'm back, I love football. I'm passionately in love with football in a real sense.

"But there is going to be a lot of hard work here. A lot of miles travelling, looking at players and looking at the youth set-up as well. I proved at Newcastle that you can get results in two or three years."

As an opening speech it was stirring stuff. Yet Keegan's priority, first and foremost, must be to rebuild his reputation from the battering it took during 19 punishing months in charge of the national team.

"I'm never going to talk about England again," he said. "Okay, at that level I found it tough. I've got my views on why I wasn't successful, but they will stay with me. It's history now and I've to put it down to experience.

"I'm going to have something to prove to everyone but that doesn't worry me. It drives me on. I've had something to prove since I was a kid and everyone said I was too small to play football.

"What I will say is that I've never considered turning my back on the game. I think my skills are more suited to club football, building something that people can be proud of. I've proved that at Newcastle and Fulham and, with a bit of luck, I can do it here."

This afternoon a specially convened board meeting will let him know exactly how much money is available, although it will be no more than £8 million sterling next season, with a further £20 million should he lead City back to the Premiership at the first attempt. "All the ingredients are there, now we have to put them in a pan and cook them," he said.

Keegan has asked Willie Donachie to remain at the club, although he is likely to recruit Arthur Cox and Derek Fazackerley, along with either Peter Beardsley or Paul Bracewell.

He will be the highest-paid manager in the first division and his high-profile arrival saw the club installed yesterday as the bookmakers' favourites to win the league.

"We've got a reputation for managerial changes, but this is an experience I desperately want to avoid again," said City's chairman David Bernstein. "Kevin's record at Newcastle and Fulham is the stuff of legends and there was only ever one target."

Of that there is little doubt, although there was considerable embarrassment when Keegan disclosed City had made their initial contact 24 hours before Joe Royle's sacking.

In perhaps his loosest comment since infamously blurting out on Sky that he would "love it" if Newcastle beat Manchester United to the title in 1996, he revealed: "I got a phone call on Sunday to see if I was interested and then I was approached on Monday."

In accepting what has frequently been described as a poisoned chalice, Keegan becomes City's seventh manager in eight years at Maine Road.

"When you're a kid, your mum always tells you to steer clear of any main road," he joked. But at a club that has become a bastion of heroic failure, only time will tell whether he should have heeded the advice.