At this stage of the year, anniversaries come thick and fast. The most memorable games of the season are always the ones that count for something; the emotion and the importance of an encounter can lead to the wildest stories: titles are won and records are broken. Sometimes, even great goals are scored.
On Monday evening, Newcastle clinched promotion, amusing themselves in front of a crowd of over 50,000 at St James’ Park and running out 4-1 winners. But exactly 12 years previously, it wasn’t a promotion party on the Magpies’ schedule, it was a trip to Old Trafford to face Manchester United. A trip they’ll happily be making again next season.
That 2004/05 season can be seen as the start of a slump the club hasn’t really been able to get out of ever since. Sacking Sir Bobby Robson in August 2004 after a fifth-placed finish the previous season now looks particularly trigger happy, and only once have the club reached that level again – the 2011/12 season, the aftermath of which saw Alan Pardew given a fairly generous eight-year contract with the club. 12 years ago, they finished a disappointing 14th and appointed Graeme Souness as manager. So things haven’t really been the same at St James’ Park ever since.
In fact, things haven’t been the same in football since then either. The Premier League has moved on. Dramatically so, in fact. Not only was 2004/05 a season where the wheels started to come off Newcastle’s late 90s early 2000s golden period, but it was also the season in which Jose Mourinho won his – and Roman Abramovich’s – first Premier League title with Chelsea.
It was also current Newcastle boss Rafael Benitez’s first season in England with Liverpool, where he won the Champions League that season, and Wayne Rooney’s very first season at Old Trafford, having signed from Everton for upwards of £25m in the summer of 2004. By April of his first season, Rooney was flying in a United shirt. Perhaps the most memorable game of that debut season was his actual debut for the club in a Champions League group stage game against Fenerbahce where he scored a hat-trick. But for sheer box-office thunder, maybe it was his strike 12 years ago against Newcastle.
12 years doesn’t sound like it should be quite so long ago, but it is. It’s an age ago. It was a time when Rooney was still a fresh-faced teenager; when Alan Shearer brought joy rather than dull cliches on Match of the Day on a Saturday evening; and when Claude Makelele just played a ‘defensive midfield role’.
But comparing that with the modern day, doesn’t look too favourable to Newcastle. They were an important club back then, a club who were supposed to be playing Barcelona and Inter Milan in Champions League games, not a club losing to Ipswich Town and sweating over promotion from the Championship for a few days.
And yet, football can change again.
Newcastle are undoubtedly a huge football club. The kind of football club that can attract over 50,000 people to their stadium to watch them play Preston in the Championship. The challenge now is to make it count.
If the 2004/05 season was Wayne Rooney’s arrival at Old Trafford, amidst explosive performances, memorable goals and a changing of the guard for modern football, then it is very possible that Newcastle’s 2016/17 promotion season will coincide with Rooney’s exit from the Manchester United first team. Whether or not he leaves, his time at the top is certainly up.
The book ends to Rooney’s time at the very top, could well be the bookends to Newcastle’s slump – this current malaise which has seen the club plumb the depths of the Championship twice in the last decade or so.
Modern football changed a great deal that season, and Newcastle United were a part of it then. And after doing their penance and ascending from the Championship at the first time of asking, the Magpies will be part of it again.
Welcome back to the Premier League Newcastle United: memories like that Rooney goal are probably what to expect.
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