Instead, the former England manager came out and said that he would be staying at iPro Stadium in an attempt to get The Rams back into the Premier League for the first time since 2008.
Something that he was expected to do this season after Play Off Final heartbreak at the end of the 2013/14 campaign.
And with Newcastle plummeting towards relegation without any sort of resistance under the ‘guidance’ of current Head Coach John Carver, The Wally With The Brolly was seen as our saviour.
Seeing as Derby fans (if you believe the message board) cannot stand the obnoxious muppet ... why would we take to him?
But having a Championship manager - who isn't very good - refuse the advances of a Premier League club the size of Newcastle, it starts to get very worrying.
It was expected that McClaren, who has fallen quite dramatically from the very top of the game, would jump at a chance to get his name back into the mainstream and the ‘best league in the world’.
He says he is desperate to get back to the Premier League, but nobody (apart from Newcastle) have shown any interest.
Should he have accepted Mike Ashley’s offer to take charge for the remaining games of the season, McClaren could have won in the eyes of the Geordie public, or arguably the eyes of the nation as a whole.
If he saved Newcastle’s season and kept them in the Premier League then he would have achieved something.
When Alan Shearer took over for the last eight games of the 2008/9 season ... he was told he was in a "no lose" situation.
But taking the club down ruined his managerial career!
McClaren seems to have learnt a lesson from it, thinking if he took the club down, he would be berated just as, or even possibly more so than John Carver is at the moment.
There is more to this than the former Middlesbrough manager suggests.
This is the team that beat Chelsea in December, and all it needs is a manager they believe in ... because they certainly don't believe in Carver!
A change could lift the gloom, but NOT McClaren. He is a man who "builds" teams and rarely makes an instant impact.
The Newcastle hierarchy, if they were actually planning to replace Carver after the humiliation at Leicester, should have sorted this all out a long, long time ago.
It has been apparent for some time that Carver isn’t cut out for management at the highest level.
McClaren's time at Derby has NOT rebuilt his reputation at all.
He blew it last season in the play-off final and they didn't even reach the play-offs this season.
Derby fans were hoping Newcastle would take him ... but I'm glad to say ... they are stuck with him.