Steve McClaren’s stint at Middlesbrough resulted in him winning the League Cup, taking the club into Europe, reaching the UEFA Cup final and eventually leaving for the England job.
That was back in 2006.
Were Newcastle to go for McClaren they would be bringing in a manager who has left Wolfsburg, Nottingham Forest and Derby County under a bit of a cloud.
McClaren knows how it all works in the North East and knows that instant results would be required to keep an already unhappy crowd at bay. Although ask any Boro fans what they think of McClaren and you’d get mixed answers.
Fans didn’t always enjoy his brand of football and at one stage he had a season ticket flung his way during a 4-0 defeat at the hands of Aston Villa.
Newcastle fans enjoy seeing attacking football, but McClaren likes to break games down and keep things tight and squeeze the life out of opponents ... and in recent years that has seen him kicked out of three clubs!
There was the game in 2003 during his Boro stint in which the Teessiders won a game 1-0 without having a SINGLE shot on target as Sun Jihai scored an own goal to hand them the points.
But Boro got the job done.
Just like they did all the way through their League Cup run in 2004 when they won the first and only trophy of the club’s history.
The football wasn’t pretty.
Then there’s McClaren’s record at FC Twente when he led the Dutch side to the Eredivisie title ahead of bigger guns like Ajax and PSV Eindhoven back in 2010.
Although that was five years ago, and since then McClaren has been shown the door at Wolfsburg and failed to get Nottingham Forest or Derby County promoted.
This season the Rams spluttered to a poor finish and failed to gain a play-off place despite being in a commanding position.
His England record resulted in the Three Lions failing to qualify for Euro 2008. The enduring image of McClaren as national boss is of him sheltering under an umbrella during a dire night against Croatia.
They say Mike Ashley is a big England fan, but he’s also stated he won’t have a say in the next appointment.
That task will be left to managing director Lee Charnley.
United’s board have stayed tight-lipped since the season finished, and while there was a small flicker of feel-good factor after Jonas Gutierrez’s last gasp goal, that has quickly disappeared.
Jonas’ claim that he was told via a phone call – from a passed mobile from team-mate Ryan Taylor – did not go down well with a lot of fans.
And talk of Patrick Vieira sliding out of contention means that McClaren comes into contention again after snubbing Newcastle twice already this year.
Newcastle have struggled in 2015 and won just three matches in total under John Carver.
In the division below McClaren didn’t do much better, winning just 10 games from 25 including victories over Southport and Chesterfield in the cups.
He left Derby under a bit of a cloud as rumours of the Newcastle job coincided with the Rams falling out of promotion then play-off contention.
Any potential arrival for McClaren on Tyneside, therefore, would be more like Graeme Souness’ “unveiling” at St James’ Park back in 2004 when he replaced Bobby Robson.
Back then Souness was on the brink of being sacked by Blackburn Rovers before Newcastle saved them the job of paying compensation to the Scot.
It did little to excite Newcastle fans, and while McClaren could steady the ship at St James’ Park, his arrival would hardly result in mass fanfare onTyneside.