April 3 – Liverpool 4 Newcastle 3

NEWCASTLE United in the relegation zone? How are the mighty fallen. You know things are bad when Mike Ashley calls in Alan Shearer to try and save the club. “Hmmm, we’re really in trouble here, what shall we do? We could bring Keegan back?” “No Mike, you’ve already tried that doomed-to-end-in-tears-from-the-start-crowd-pleaser.” “Oh yeah. Well, next on the list of Geordie messiahs is Shearer. Give him a call.”

You have to wonder who they’ll end up with if this doesn’t work. Peter Beardsley? Rob Lee?

Today we are going back to a time when Newcastle really were the best and most exciting team in the country and were chasing the League title. On this day in 1996 the Toon Army travelled to Anfield to take on Liverpool in a match that became an instant classic and came to define both the Newcastle team of the time and Kevin Keegan himself.

Going into the game the Geordies were three points behind leader Manchester United with a game in hand but Liverpool were also in the title hunt and had home advantage which helped as Robbie Fowler fired them into the lead after just two minutes.

Newcastle fans knew better than to panic at going a goal down – after all they expected to concede at least one goal every game and they could be more certain than any other supporters that their team would definitely score.

And they did, just eight minutes later through Les Ferdinand before going in front on 14 minutes with a David Ginola strike.

Ten minutes into the second half Kop hero Robbie Fowler scored again to level the tie at 2-2. Newcastle simply came back at them again and Columbian Faustino Asprilla lofted the ball over David James to put them 3-2 up.

Enter Stan Collymore. The striker, who was the Premiership’s record signing at £8.5m, restored parity in the 68th minute, stabbing in a Jason McAteer cross. After being made to look like amateurs in front of their own fans for periods of the game, Liverpool could now smell blood, and went for the kill. It came two minutes into injury time, again from Collymore who scored a sensational winner to send the Kop wild and send Keegan into despair. The image of him in an oversized coat dropping his head to the advertising hoarding he was leaning on was beamed to millions through the Sky cameras. He, and his team, had been beaten at their own game.

After the match KK was unrepentant about his team’s style and rightly labeled the match “a classic”. “It was a terrific game, and we shall go on playing the same way, because that’s what we believe in. Either we go on, or I go,” he said in typical Keegan style, adding: “I’ve never managed a team that played so well and got nothing.”

The game summed up in 90 minutes why Keegan’s Newcastle team were so admired and yet why they came up short in the end. KK was right, it was a classic – it is probably not hyperbole to say it is the best match in Premier League history – but it did not end the way Newcastle needed it to. They failed to recover some of the lost ground on Manchester United in the League and their title challenge had faltered terminally. The pressure grew on the team and the manager as Alex Ferguson’s men kept winning and before the month was out Keegan had crumbled live on TV with his “I would love it” rant.

Newcastle had to settle for second as Man United won the title and by January the following year Keegan had resigned.

David Ginola, one of KK’s players who starred in the 4-3 game believes Newcastle would have gone on to clinch the Premier League title had they won the match. “If we had managed to keep the score at 3-2 we would have won the league – definitely,” he said. “We played so well up until they scored. For us it was such an easy season to be honest – we were scoring goals for fun.

“Les Ferdinand scored 25 Premier League goals and he was Player of the Year. Every single area of the team was very good, we played very attractive football also, and we definitely deserved to win the league.

“Manchester United wouldn’t agree with that – they had a strong team too, and they managed to finish the season better than us. They had the experience they needed in the run-in. After the first half of the season we thought we were going to win the league. If we had won the league this year, Newcastle United would have gone on to win more trophies.”

But they didn’t.

After all that excitement we need a quiet lie down but never fear, we shall be back tomorrow with more tales from the past. Until then quench your thirst for date-based historical football knowledge by reading which famous club was founded on this day.