Alan Shearer has revealed he was ditched as Newcastle manager in 2009 just two hours before he believed he was about to be unveiled as the club’s permanent boss.

The former striker said he had shaken hands on a three-year deal with then-owner Mike Ashley, two days after the club had been relegated from the Premier League following a 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa with Shearer in interim charge.

Despite his failure to keep the club up, meetings with Ashley at the club’s training ground 48 hours later had been productive, with detailed plans made for the team’s upcoming season in the Championship.

Speaking at a live show of the ‘The Rest is Football’ podcast on London’s Southbank on Friday, Shearer revealed a member of Ashley’s entourage called to say the deal was off just two hours before it was set to be made public.

“We got relegated on the Sunday against Aston Villa,” he said. “Mike Ashley flew in to the training ground in his helicopter on the Tuesday and he was there all day. We were in a meeting for five, six, seven hours, going backwards and forwards.

“We worked out the budget for what we had for the next 12 months, two years. The staff, contracts. And by three or four o’clock we stood up and we shook hands across the table – ‘That’s a deal – see you on Thursday to announce a three-year contract’. And I’ve never seen or spoken to him since.

“I got a call on the Thursday morning, two hours before we’re due to announce it. I got a call from one of his guys to say there’s an issue with the bank – we’ll be in touch.”

Shearer had been appointed on 1 April in the 2008/09 season with the club 18th in the table and in danger of dropping out of the top flight for the first time since 1993.

He was the fourth manager to lead the team in a chaotic campaign. Kevin Keegan, who began the season in charge, left after only three games, with Joe Kinnear coming in following a spell in caretaker charge for Chris Hughton.

Kinnear was dismissed in February, leading to a second spell at the helm for Hughton, before Ashley turned to Shearer – who had no previous managerial experience – to keep the team up.

He won only one of eight games in charge, a 3-1 win at home to Middlesbrough that briefly lifted them out of the bottom three, before defeats to Fulham and Villa condemned them to the drop by a single point.

“Newcastle were bottom of the league and going down,” said Shearer. “If somebody rings you up, a club that you love are in trouble, you can’t say I’m not going to come and give it a go. So it was the right thing to do.

“I was on £100,000 a game. Even if we lost. And I was on a £1million bonus if we kept them up. And we went down by a f***ing point.”

Ashley instead turned to Hughton to lead the club back into the top flight, which he managed at the first attempt, winning the Championship by 11 points.