Bill Shankly once claimed that football was more important than a matter of life and death. As Chief Sports Writer Scott Wilson learnt yesterday, Glenn Roeder begs to differ.

THREE years ago this week, Glenn Roeder was lying in a hospital bed fighting for his life.

Battling to overcome a potentially fatal tumour that had forced him to collapse after a game against Middlesbrough, the then West Ham boss underwent a three-and-a-halfhour operation in a London clinic to remove part of his brain.

Given the seriousness of the ramifications if anything had gone wrong, it is little wonder that Roeder has already brought a refreshing sense of perspective to the job of leading Newcastle.

Similarly, given the complete success of the surgery, it is also little wonder that the 50-year-old remains resolutely optimistic about his chances of reviving the Magpies.

When Roeder replaced Graeme Souness in early February, Newcastle was a club on its knees.

Ripped apart by injuries and careering towards the relegation zone, a season that had started with dreams of the Champions League looked like ending in disaster.

In the subsequent three months, the Londoner has already applied the kiss of life.

A seventh-placed finish, and qualification for the Intertoto Cup, represents remarkable progress in such a short space of time.

It does not, though, represent a return to full health. Next season, Roeder intends to complete Newcastle's recovery by steering his new permanent employers to a place in the top six.

Given the considerable challenges he has already overcome in his career, it is a task he will approach with understandable relish.

"To be asked to manage Newcastle is an amazing achievement, " said Roeder, who has admitted he feared for his life when the doctors sat him down to tell him of the tumour in his brain. "Three years ago I had an operation that seemed to have made this impossible.

"What has happened here should give hope to everyone that the impossible can be made possible.

"I have made it happen. When I was having that operation, something like this could never have entered my mind.

"I was thinking about survival, my wife and my three children. I knew I had to survive for them."

Subsequently, he has done far more than merely survive. On returning to football, he took control of a West Ham side that had dropped out of the Premiership in his absence.

A poor start to life in the Championship saw Roeder jettisoned before the end of August, but he eventually returned to the game last summer as the head of Newcastle's Academy.

WITHIN two months, a team of Magpies youngsters had won a leading competition in Germany - within seven months, the former Newcastle skipper was in charge of first-team affairs after Souness' dismissal.

Eleven wins from 17 games were enough to earn him the job on a permanent basis, completing a revival that had seemed extremely unlikely when he was hounded out of Upton Park three years ago.

The turnaround has been total, the recovery rousing. Yet for Roeder, it is a personal success story that can act as an inspiration to anyone facing seemingly insurmountable odds.

"I have moved and recovered, " he said. "The impossible has happened and that should give people hope.

"If you get knocked down, as long as you get up again, no matter what business you're in, you can't fail.

"It's only the people who lay down on the floor who can be accused of failing. You go down, you get straight back up and start swinging - that's what I have done."

The fightback has earned him one of the most high-profile managerial jobs in the country, yet even when Freddy Shepherd approached him to be caretaker manager, Roeder felt it better to keep his ambition under wraps.

His early press conferences contained innumerable public dismissals of anything that even suggested he could be offered the job on a permanent basis. Privately, though, he was rapidly being won round.

"I didn't think my days were over, " he conceded. "Publicly, I suppose I didn't give people lots of encouragement that I would manage again. But privately, it has always burned inside me.

"And not just manage, because that's not enough. It has to be managing successfully. Thankfully, the chairman has given me a huge chance to do just that.

"I like the pressure of working for a club that has to finish in the top six. Maybe higher after that, but the first target is the top six.

"I like that pressure. I put pressure on myself and I put pressure on players. That's my style of management and it has an effect."