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Let’s be honest here – Newcastle United fans haven’t exactly had much to cheer recently. Despite being promoted back into the Premier League last season, their most recent transfer window was a farce. They’ve made a disastrous start to the season and inspirational manager Rafael Benitez is rumoured to be abandoning ship at any time.
It hasn’t always been like this for the Geordie faithful – while the Magpies have been somewhat of a yo-yo club as of late, only a few years ago they were one of England’s most powerful sides, dominant on home soil and on the continent, and St. James’s Park was home to some of the Premier League’s greats.
Here then, are five special moments that Newcastle fans would love to relive again.
#1 Alan Shearer joins Newcastle and breaks Jackie Milburn’s Goalscoring record
It’s a telling of the Mike Ashley era at Newcastle that the club haven’t broken their record transfer fee since the 2005/06 season – over a decade ago now – when they paid what now sounds like a paltry fee of £16m to bring Michael Owen to St. James’s Park. It wasn’t always like that. A decade before Owen signed, Newcastle shattered not only the English transfer record, but the world record too to bring local boy Alan Shearer back from Blackburn Rovers. And in 1996, £15m was a huge sum.
While Shearer didn’t deliver the Premier League title to Newcastle as the Geordie fans would’ve hoped, he did prove to be a monstrous success in the famous black-and-white shirt. Shearer had been a goalscoring machine while at Blackburn and despite some serious injuries during his Newcastle stint, he didn’t exactly slow down when it came to putting the ball in the back of the net. Shearer spent ten seasons there before his retirement, and in six of those, he broke the 20-goal mark.
His most outstanding achievement, though? February 4th, 2006 saw Shearer score a rather low-key goal for his standards, a toe-poke against Portsmouth. For Shearer though, it was anything but low-key, as it was his 201st goal for Newcastle, meaning he’d broken the 49-year old record of 200 goals scored by the legendary Jackie Milburn to become the Magpies’ all time leading scorer. Shearer ended up retiring with 206 goals for the club – a record that most likely will take a lot longer than 49 years to break.
Shearer’s goalscoring exploits – and his legendary 201st goal – are something that Newcastle fans would kill to relive today.
#2 Papiss Cisse’s ludicrous goal against Chelsea
When Senegalese international Papiss Cisse signed for Newcastle for just over £9m in January 2012, he brought with him an astonishing goal record from the Bundesliga, where he’d scored 24 goals in 34 games for Freiburg in 2010/11 and had already hit 9 goals in 2011/12 by the time he made his way to Tyneside.
The hope was that he’d hit the ground running for Newcastle, and that turned out to be the case indeed. Cisse scored the winner against Aston Villa in his debut for the club and didn’t seem capable of slowing down.
By the end of the season he’d scored an incredible 13 goals in 14 games for the Magpies and had also broken a record – he’d reached the five goal mark faster than any other Newcastle player, the record previously being held by the legendary Les Ferdinand. His goals helped Newcastle to a 5th place Premier League finish. It was, however, his 13th and final goal of the season that stood out more than any other.
Cisse scored two goals against Chelsea in the 0-2 win at Stamford Bridge and the first one was good enough – a half volley with the left foot from just inside the box that flew into the top corner, beyond the reach of Petr Cech. The second though blew everyone’s minds. A throw-in from the left side of the pitch was chested into his path by Shola Ameobi, and from 37 yards out – and wide of the left corner of the penalty area – Cisse hit a volley with the outside of his right boot that somehow swerved around Cech and into the back of the net.
It was one of the greatest goals in Premier League history and is a moment that Newcastle fans likely enjoy replaying more often than we think.
#3 The 5-0 destruction of Manchester United
1995/96 was one of the most entertaining Premier League seasons of all time but it ended on a sour note for Newcastle fans, as Kevin Keegan’s side – known affectionately as ‘The Entertainers’ – somehow conspired to throw away a 12-point lead at the top of the table and were eventually overhauled by Manchester United. 1996/97 was supposed to be different, and as a signal of intent, Keegan signed Alan Shearer, hoping the Geordie hero would bring the title to St. James’ Park.
As it happened, a title win proved beyond the Magpies and Keegan didn’t even last the full season, resigning in January after a bad run of form essentially ended their title hopes. Before that, though, they did have one fleeting moment of brilliance – a 5-0 destruction of the side that stole the title from under their nose in the previous season, perhaps the best Newcastle performance under Keegan’s stewardship of the club.
The team came into the game under criticism for their gung-ho tactics, but on this day it didn’t matter. Newcastle went into halftime with a 2-0 lead thanks to goals from Darren Peacock David Ginola and didn’t slow down in the second half, with further goals from Les Ferdinand and Alan Shearer making the result academic. The final goal was the finest, though – a beautifully cushioned chip from midfielder Philippe Albert that left Peter Schmeichel rooted to the spot.
Newcastle fans can only dream about destroying a great side like Manchester United these days.
#4 The greatest comeback in Premier League history vs. Arsenal
In February 2011 Newcastle were deep into the Mike Ashley era, and things were already taking a turn for the bizarre. Chris Hughton had brought the Magpies back up into the Premier League at the first time of asking, but was then fired in December 2010 pretty inexplicably given the club weren’t threatened by relegation and Hughton was popular with the fans. Alan Pardew took over to much controversy, but then oversaw one of the most remarkable results in club history.
The game – a tough one against title challengers Arsenal at St. James’s – looked set to be an absolute disaster at first, when Theo Walcott scored for the visitors after just 44 seconds. By ten minutes in, the Magpies were 0-3 down thanks to subsequent goals from Johan Djourou and Robin van Persie. Van Persie soon added a fourth goal before half-time and the Geordies looked dead and buried going into the break.
This was a different Newcastle, though – buoyed by a core of tough British players such as Kevin Nolan, Joey Barton, Andy Carroll and Alan Smith – players who refused to give up and were willing to give their all for the club. After 50 minutes, Arsenal’s Abou Diaby was sent off for violent conduct and suddenly, the tide turned.
Barton then scored a penalty after 68 minutes and just seven minutes later Leon Best added a second. Another penalty from Barton – on 83 minutes – added more inexplicable hope, before late midfielder Cheik Tiote thundered in an equaliser with just three minutes to go.
It remains the greatest comeback in Premier League history – the only time a team’s ever come back from being 4-0 down – and Newcastle fans would love to have such fighting spirit in their side today.
#5 The 3-2 win over Barcelona in the Champions League
Football historians have often blamed the signing of Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla for the collapse of Newcastle’s title hopes in 1995/96, arguing that his arrival disrupted the balance in the squad and that he wasn’t really needed anyway given striker Les Ferdinand was on fire himself. Regardless of those types of feeling though, Newcastle fans will always have a soft spot for Asprilla due to his performance two seasons later in a Champions League game against Barcelona.
35,274 fans turned up at St. James’s for the game, as the season was the first time that the Champions League had been expanded to include domestic league runners-up like Newcastle and so it was a big occasion for the Geordie faithful. They may have expected a tough game from a Barcelona side that featured the likes of Luis Figo, Luis Enrique and Rivaldo, but instead, the Catalans were torn apart in the first half by Asprilla, inspirational captain Rob Lee, and the mercurial Irish winger Keith Gillespie.
Asprilla scored a penalty after 26 minutes and then headed in two Gillespie crosses on 30 minutes and then 49 minutes. The game was essentially over, but despite Kevin Keegan having left the club well over a season beforehand, the gung-ho style of the Magpies still remained and somehow they allowed Barcelona to come back, scoring 2 goals and then relying on the heroics of goalkeeper Shay Given to ensure the score remained 3-2 to seal a famous victory.
While Newcastle went out of the tournament in the group stage eventually, no Geordie fan would ever forget such a night – and they may well believe they’ll never see another one like it again.
