Glenn Roeder's tenure at West Ham ended with him being sacked shortly after returning to work following surgery to remove a benign brain tumour. Chief Football Writer Paul Fraser found out what went wrong at Upton Park and how he intends to make the most of his new role as academy manager at Newcastle United.

THE expensive arrival of Michael Owen was greeted by over 15,000 screaming Geordies and another £34m has been spent by manager Graeme Souness during his 15-month tenure, but there is one other Newcastle United signing that has received far less fanfare than the rest.

Yet, despite the low profile, Glenn Roeder's installation as academy manager in July could prove to be the boldest and most important appointment chairman Freddy Shepherd has thrown the club's cash towards.

Less than an hour's conversation with Mr Shepherd was all it took for Roeder to agree to return to the club he first joined 21 years ago, and make a comeback to the game he fell out of after being sacked at West Ham in August 2003.

The former defender has no intention of heading back into first team management, instead he is choosing to focus on unearthing Newcastle's future. Something that can surely only be good for the success-starved Magpies.

During his days at West Ham, where he was promoted from youth team boss, he was responsible for nurturing the outstanding talent of Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Glen Johnson, Jermain Defoe, Frank Lampard and Michael Carrick - to name but six.

"I could sit here and say I had a big influence on Ferdinand, Cole, Johnson, Defoe, Lampard, Carrick. But players like that have God-given talent," said a modest Roeder, who still keeps in touch with several of his proteges.

"You can't put in what God left out. I know I'm right. The top sportsmen are not coached to that level. All we can do, and I would like to think I did, is help them attain the best level they can. It's how you are with the God-given talents that tests how you are as a coach.

"I would like to think I had an influence on them - the younger ones in particular rather than the older lads like Ferdinand and Lampard. I did a lot with Carrick, Defoe, Johnson and Cole. They have God-given talents and with some good information, instilled in them by me, they have been helped on their way."

And, as head of Newcastle's academy at Little Benton, Roeder is entrusted with the unenviable task of trying to recruit similar 'God-given talents' for Souness and his successors to use in the Premiership.

Just 45 minutes south, down the A19, North-East neighbours Middlesbrough are setting the benchmark for snapping up and developing the schoolboy talent.

To date Stewart Downing, James Morrison, Tony McMahon, Stuart Parnaby, Matthew Bates, Andrew Davies and Adam Johnson are among a clutch of local players to emerge from the club's youth system.

Roeder's task is to ensure Newcastle, with arguably the finest and most stylish academy structure, to follow suit. He wants to overtake Boro and help to produce Newcastle's next 'Paul Gascoigne' and, in turn, stop the club from having to go out and splash the cash every time they need a place filled.

"My ambition is not to manage again. If I can produce first team players for Graeme Souness and Newcastle it will be the world I want. This is a difficult job because it's harder to find Premiership teenagers," said Roeder, who watched Newcastle's Under-18s win the prestigious Oberndorf Tournament in Germany in the summer, beating Borussian Moenchengladbach and Sporting Lisbon on the way.

"You have to be the best in your own backyard first, before you look further afield. Things are in cycles and, at the moment, and it saddens me to say this, that Middlesbrough are the best in this neck of the woods.

"We have Steven Taylor and Peter Ramage who have come through and I have been impressed with them as people and with their ability.

"If Taylor was playing for a London club the media would be all over him. That's what happened with Cole, Johnson, Defoe and Carrick.

"It's up to us to bring the pendulum back Newcastle's way. We have to make sure that if there is a Beardsley, Waddle or Gascoigne out there we get them. We have to find them first and get them into Newcastle United."

It is occasions like today, as Newcastle visit his old club West Ham, when you would imagine Roeder is a little aggrieved he is no longer in the thick of Premiership management.

Instead he is far more upbeat about things. And, given the way he has bounced back from surgery to remove a benign brain tumour in the April of two years ago, is it little wonder.

It is a sign of the man's approach to life that he feels no hatred towards the West Ham hierarchy for the way they dumped him on the football scrapheap, after making a return to his post just three months after his life-saving operation.

Some of the top managerial talents in the game - Sir Alex Ferguson, Claudio Ranieri, Gerard Houllier and David Moyes, among others - were quick to make contact with Roeder after a post-match collapse during the Hammers' unsuccessful battle against relegation that season.

Yet Roeder claims his very own chairman, Terence Brown - the man he worked under for a number of years - never made contact to wish him well, and still hasn't.

"I'm not bitter, I haven't got an ounce of bitterness in me," said Roeder, who now regards Houllier as one of his closest friends in the game. "Glenn Roeder has not done one bad story about West Ham. Not about the chairman not contacting me when everyone else did. I didn't do any bitter article about West Ham and it disappoints me when I see managers whacking their own club when they leave.

"For me they lose their credibility completely. In my estimation they go to zero. It's a fact of life that one day you get sacked.

"All managers are in opposition together and we row with each other sometimes, competing against each other. But something like what happened to me shows how the family of football comes together.

"I had letters from the greatest - Sir Alex Ferguson - which was important to read. David Moyes said that he always thought football was more than life but what happened to me changed all that.

"The ironic thing is that the only person who never had any contact with was my own chairman. I wouldn't expect it now. Once it was diagnosed there was no contact. Everyone else did, but not him. It was amazing that so many people bothered to contact me. It was a nice feeling."

West Ham, who reclaimed their place back in the top-flight via the play-offs at the end of last season, host Newcastle at Upton Park this afternoon and it is unlikely Roeder will be anywhere in sight.

Although he chooses, after everything that has happened, not to look back but to the future, the 50-year-old feels things could quite easily have turned out so differently for him in the east end of London.

Injuries, like Newcastle have found to their cost so often this season under Souness, severely hampered West Ham's efforts in the Premiership yet they still managed to amass 42 points.

However that total, the highest ever recorded by a relegated team from that division, failed to prevent a club steeped in tradition from dropping out of the Premiership for the first time in ten years.

"Who knows what would have happened had we stayed up," said Roeder.

"The media took a negative view of me and that didn't help. I felt I hit the post because I didn't offer any excuses."

Back in 1997, Roeder was part of Glenn Hoddle's coaching staff when England battled their way to a goalless draw in Rome against Italy to secure a place in the World Cup the following year.

Just 24 hours later, after the wild celebrations in Italy, he was back in England undertaking his other role - the father figure - a s he watched his son play in an Under-12s Sunday League match.

Now, as academy manager, Roeder is putting the combined experiences from a lifetime of fatherhood and in football to good use by trying to ensure the future at Newcastle is bright.

"That surely can only be to the benefit of St James'.