Kevin Keegan has revealed how he was forced to sneak into St James' Park in disguise because he is 'persona non grata as long as the Mike Ashley regime remains in place' at Newcastle United.
That is the only occasion the club legend has set foot inside the ground since his second spell as Newcastle manager ended acrimoniously in September 2008.
A 2009 tribunal awarded Keegan £2million in damages for constructive dismissal following a struggle with Ashley and his regime.
Keegan, whose book 'My Life in Football' is being serialised by The Times, also revealed that Newcastle missed out on the chance to sign Luka Modric because vice president for player recruitment Tony Jimenez deemed him 'too lightweight.'
Keegan was invited to St James' Park to attend a leaving do for a lifelong Newcastle fan who was emigrating to America but he had to sneak into the ground with a disguise consisting of glasses and a flat cap.
He writes: 'I will always be persona non grata as long as the Mike Ashley regime remains in place.
'I know how absurd it must sound and, when I think about it properly, what kind of craziness is it that someone with my long emotional history with Newcastle now has to smuggle himself into the ground where the owner used to call me 'King Kev'?
'I am already looking forward to the day when Newcastle is free of the man who has lurched from one bad decision to another, run an empire of self-harm and handed money and power to people who deserved neither.'
Keegan goes on to describe how he 'came up against a wall of incompetence, deceit and arrogance' and that his time at Newcastle under Ashley was a 'tragicomedy'.
One such episode came in 2008 when Croatian midfielder Modric, then 22, left Dinamo Zagreb and his agent offered Newcastle the chance to sign him for £16m.
Keegan met Modric's agent in London and invited Jimenez and Terry McDermott along.
He recalls: 'It was an opportunity to sign one of the outstanding young footballers in Europe and, to begin with, I was making decent inroads.
'Then Jimenez piped up. "Can I come in here?" he said. "I don't think Luka is big enough for the Premier League. He's too lightweight. He's decent, but he's not good enough."
Modric went on to sign for Tottenham and has since won the Champions League four times with Real Madrid.