How times change. Leicester City are Premier League champions. Newcastle United are on the brink of relegation.
It almost beggars belief that it’s 23 years ago today that the most memorable encounter between the pair took place.
At a sun-drenched St James’ Park on May 9, 1993, a brilliant Newcastle United side destroyed Leicester 7-1 in the final game of the campaign.
It was the crowning glory of a season when Kevin Keegan’s newly-christened Entertainers stormed back to the top flight with a brand of attacking football never witnessed at the Toon in living memory.
Ironically, almost exactly a year earlier, relegation-threatened United had travelled to Leicester’s Filbert Street needing a win to avoid a cataclysmic drop into the old Third Division. They won...
But come this day in 1993, fans at Gallowgate were in party mood as Keegan’s promoted team took Leicester to the cleaners and paraded the First Division (it was the second division, really) trophy.
The official crowd was 30,129, but somehow thousands more found a way in to create a joyous atmosphere on packed terraces that would soon make way for an all-seater St James’ Park.
There were crowd renditions of Queen’s We Are The Champions, Lindisfarne’s Run For Home, and even the Liverpool anthem You’ll Never Walk Alone, which had been a copy-cat staple for many clubs’ terrace choirs back in the 1970s.
The match was a blur of goals with United incredibly 6-0 up at half-time on front of the TV cameras.
David Kelly and Andy Cole both notched hat-tricks, with Rob Lee also hitting the net.
It was a game that will live forever in the memory for those who were there, and was the catalyst for the white-knuckle ride of Keegan’s Entertainers in the Premier League over the next few seasons.
Sadly, those days really do seem like a very long time ago.