Mike Ashley has finally bowed to the inevitable. After spending much of his Newcastle tenure almost running away from the idea of appointing Alan Shearer as his manager, the club's owner finds himself effectively forced into a corner.
With relegation beckoning and options running out, it seems Ashley has finally listened to those nagging voices in his ear telling him that Shearer, not Kevin Keegan, was the manager Newcastle needed all along.
A man of impulse, prone to acting on whims, the multi-millionaire sports retailer bought Newcastle without bothering to perform due diligence and then hired Keegan when many felt that Blackburn's then manager Mark Hughes had one foot in the St James' Park door.
It appears Ashley has had another boldly dramatic change of heart. After some weeks spent not so discreetly courting Wigan's Steve Bruce, a light has suddenly gone on inside his head reminding him that there was a simpler solution much closer to home.
No stranger to the world's casinos, Ashley has always been partial to a punt and is clearly willing to take a high-stakes gamble on a novice manager rather than turning to an old hand in the Terry Venables or Alan Curbishley mould.
The most contradictory of characters, Ashley oscillates wildly between long periods of inertia and sudden, incisively dramatic gestures. Just last week close friends of Shearer had no inkling that this was on the agenda.
After all, Newcastle's owner had been bafflingly happy to let the club drift under Chris Hughton's reluctant caretaker charge following Joe Kinnear's admission to hospital for major cardiac surgery in February.
Shearer's arrival is very much in the tradition of Ashley appointments – in other words a major shock. Who, after all, could have predicted Keegan's installation or indeed that he would turn to Kinnear?
All his managerial choices carry significant risks. Keegan had not watched a live game for about three years after leaving Manchester City and came with a reputation for flakiness along with a penchant for signing over-priced players who were slightly past their prime.
Just as his first managerial stint with Newcastle and his times in charge of England and City ended abruptly, so it proved second time round at St James' Park when his relationship with Dennis Wise, the club's director of football, broke down irretrievably.
Ashley then turned to Kinnear, a 61-year-old who had not managed for four years since an inglorious departure from Nottingham Forest.
Old-school as they come, Kinnear seemed to fly in the face of the modern, continental style system which had so aggrieved Keegan but, until recently at least, Ashley insisted was the way forward. Moreover, Kinnear has a history of heart trouble.
Known for his ruthlessness in business as much as his loyalty to close friends, Ashley was prepared to sacrifice Keegan for Wise. Indeed, Ashley's faith in his director of football was so great that he declined to cut short a business trip to New York to act as conciliator.
Nothing is forever, though, and aware that Shearer is consistently opposed to Wise and his role, Ashley seems poised to cut the ties that for so long inexplicably bound him to the former Leeds manager, who is now soon to depart.
Like other chairmen before him, Ashley may now be less enamoured with directors of football. If only, 15 months ago, he had picked up the phone to Shearer rather than Keegan, life might just have been a good deal simpler.
