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As part of the Chronicle's End of the Decade series, we're marking the turbulent 2010s in black and white.

This morning we carried the team of the decade - according to Football Publishing Editor Mark Douglas - and we'll be carrying more articles with insight into a tumultuous period, with interviews, opinion and analysis all lined up.

We'll also be re-publishing some of our favourite articles on the big moments of the decade. We're starting with arguably the most remarkable game of the decade.

The path for perhaps the greatest comeback in Newcastle United’s history – their remarkable 20-minute salvage mission against the “Red Arrows of Arsenal” – stretched back to 2009 and the relegation which laid waste to a bloated club.

A dressing room was reformed and re-framed in the image of its captain Kevin Nolan. Promotion was won, a Premier League campaign waged with heart and fight. But – as those who were key to that remarkable day in February 2011 told us – there were other forces at play. This is the story of the men behind that day, with Jose Enrique , Steve Harper , Joey Barton and Kevin Nolan speaking at length about arguably one of the Premier League’s most remarkable afternoons.

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The build-up:

The days that preceded the game were fraught. The warning signs of problems to come under Mike Ashley’s ownership – issues that had been shelved in the Championship season – were there.

Before the start of the campaign the dressing room’s player’s committee had refused to sign a bonus schedule, feeling it undervalued their contribution to salvaging the club in the Championship. Managing director Derek Llambias, working with a free hand from Ashley, tried to force it through but found the players stood up to the board and refused to budge.

The consequences were profound. Despite the team performing well on their return to the Premier League manager Chris Hughton was to pay the price for failing to exert more authority on his squad with his job in December. Alan Pardew arrived but the club sold its prize asset Andy Carroll on deadline day despite assurances from the new manager that he was not for sale.

A midweek defeat at Fulham, in which senior forward Shola Ameobi was injured , added to the sense of unease. It was keenly felt by Barton, one of those strong dressing room voices.

“Behind-the-scenes we knew Andy had been forced out. He didn’t want to leave because we had such a good group there,” he recalls.

“Liverpool came in with such a lot of money that he had to leave. He actually said to Mike Ashley ‘Give me a new contract and I’ll stay’ but he was told in no uncertain terms that wasn’t to be the case. They accepted the offer and he had to go.

“Us knowing that in the camp, knowing that, it was the first time that we lost patience with him (Ashley) as a group of players. Mike being Mike and Derek Llambias being Derek Llambias they obviously made the right financial decision and probably in hindsight they turned out to be right but we didn’t care about money because we were losing a teammate and a massive part of our attacking arsenal in big Andy.

“We were closely knit on and off the pitch but also we could see the potential of where we could go as a team. We might not have had the stars but the adversity of the Championship had created a choesion and a bond.

“We felt we would comfortably finish in the top ten and then we could go on: it felt like the club was building for the future for the first time. We had a couple of younger players in there and Andy was the focal point for that, being a Geordie.

“The loss of him was a psychological blow – we felt ‘He doesn’t want to build a team’ and it’s not what he claimed it was about the year before. So there was a bit of frustration but once you go into a game, especially against the likes of Arsenal – who we were going in against – we just wanted to put a good performance and do our best.”

The first half:

This was not the Arsenal struggling to cling on to the coattails of Manchester City. It was not their garlanded Invincibles side either but they were very, very good – a team chasing down Manchester United for the title.

“They were frightening,” says Steve Harper . “For that first half it was like the Red Arrows were coming at us.”

It was a full St James’ Park but the atmosphere was tense, hesistant. Arsenal were not. Within a minute Theo Walcott sprinted onto an Andrei Arshavin pass, brushed off Fabricio Coloccini and rolled the ball past Harper.

105 seconds later, they were two up. A clumsy foul gave away a free-kick and Johan Djourou drifted into the space between Kevin Nolan and Mike Williamson to head home Arshavin’s free-kick.

It got worse. Before the ten minute mark Robin Van Persie added a third. “Van Persie: it was to the byline and then the cut back. That’s an Arsenal goal. That’s what you used to work on as a goalkeeper ahead of Arsenal: they’ll get to the byline, cut back. But we couldn’t do anything about it,” Harper says.

Van Persie headed a fourth on 26 minutes. “I remember lying on my back thinking: ‘This must be a dream’,” Harper recalls. His son Leo, born just 12 days earlier and now Newcastle’s under-sevens goalkeeper, was up in the stands.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

“It was his first ever game and I remember sitting on the pitch thinking ‘He’s banned from coming from any games ever again’! And also that the way this game was going his first game was going to be remembered as the one his dad conceded a record number of goals.”

Newcastle looked punch drunk. “I was angry on the pitch,” says Jose Enrique – one of the defenders bull-dozed by the Arsenal attackers. “We had beaten Arsenal 1-0 at the Emirates so we knew we were better than this but we couldn’t get close to them. We couldn’t match them and we were just chasing them all over the pitch. It felt like a humiliation.”

Harper went into survival mode. “I remember that the fourth goal went in after 26 minutes and just thinking ‘We need half-time’. I could be quite slow at the best of times but I went into super-slow mode and I remember some bloke behind me in the grumbly Gallowgate shouting at me: ‘Hurry up’.

“I was glancing over my shoulder thinking ‘We’re 4-0 down against the Red Arrows, we just need half-time!’”

Barton recalls: “They were unbelievable. We were slightly off it but they were also very, very good and they just exploited it ruthlessly. They were exceptional and you could see why they were challenging for the title. They scored relatively early and went into overdrive and I remember thinking ‘Can we keep the score down?’”

Newcastle survived until half-time with just the four on the scoreboard. They were bedraggled and humiliated but every player recalls one thing: the crowd did not turn.

(Image: Newcastle Chronicle)

Here’s Barton: “The fans were fantastic. I think they were actually appreciative of Arsenal. They gave us a bit of stick but it wasn’t too heavy. We knew we had to come out and do credit to that shirt. We thought at half-time ‘If we’re going down, we’ve got to go down fighting’. The fans, as much as any player, were so important in that comeback.”

For captain Kevin Nolan, it was also a hangover from the Championship season. “People forget how much we’d been through as a group and a set of fans together. We’d been relegated and I think the fans were fed up with us then but we’d stayed through it and committed to getting the club back up.

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“We weren’t Prima Donnas. There had been better players playing for Newcastle than us but as a group we rolled our sleeves up in the Championship, fought for promotion and didn’t back down. A lot of the lads in that relegated squad left because they didn’t fancy it but the ones left behind were totally committed to the club. We felt it and the fans could see that as well.

“It cuts two ways. They might have been grumbling about what had happened with Andy (Carroll) but they weren’t taking it out on us. It wasn’t boos and jeers at us, it was a sort of appreciation of what Arsenal had done really.”

Harper concurs: “I know that Newcastle fans appreciate good football and Arsenal were pretty special. They were capable of doing that to anyone. They were more appreciative of what Arsenal were doing that what we weren’t. They were pretty special.”

45 minutes respite was what Newcastle needed to rediscover the fighting spirit that had deserted them.

(Image: AFP)

Half-time:

Pardew had not been at Newcastle for long. He was replacing a popular manager in Hughton and his previous job had been at Southampton, who were then in League One. It is fair to say the jury was out on him at St James’ Park as he walked into the dressing room to be confronted by a simmering group of players.

It was not quite make-or-break. Pardew was aware of how his appointment appeared and done extensive homework.

“Look, Alan knew the club before he took that job. He knew he was getting that job before Chris went and he had done his work looking at what kind of a club he was taking over,” captain Nolan recalls.

“He was clever and knew it was a strong dressing room. He came and met me at my house the evening before he got the job and talked to me about what his plans for the club were, what he wanted to do and the important players to him. Chris was very popular with all of us but I liked what he had to say.”

“We were angry in the dressing room,” Enrique says. “But we were not angry at each other, we were angry with ourselves. Sometimes when you are losing a game and four or five players are not playing well you have anger directed by the players playing well. But not one of us were playing well, so who could raise their voice?”

Pardew knew this was not the time for the hair dryer. “It might look like it was the time to batter people but it wasn’t,” Nolan says. He is now a manager and recognises the importance of judging the mood in that split second. “It was about rallying each other, not digging people out. We had adults in that dressing room who knew it hadn’t been right. We were saying ‘This isn’t a five or six or seven goal defeat here’.”

Harper jokes: “We went in at half-time and I said ‘Lads, if anyone puts the white flag up I’m going to be the first Premier League goalkeeper to concede ten goals!’

“To be fair to Pardew he made a rare good half-time team talk. He reminded us of our responsibilities, he said our families and parents were there.” Pardew said that there was a responsibility to the club, the shirt and the fans to not let the defeat get any worse. “I thought it was good,” Harper said.

Barton said the fighting spirit of the Championship season kicked in. “The way they were playing in that first period: if we don’t go down and start disrupting them in some form or fashion this could be a record defeat and none of us wanted to be part of that.

“The dressing room was stunned. It’s very, very rare that you’re 4-0 down and it could have been more, they were that good. Most of us lived in the city and we knew we’d have to walk around it in the future – and you didn’t want to be doing that having lost by seven or eight at St James’ Park.

“We’d come back into the Premier League and we prided ourselves on the fact we’d been competitive in every game. No-one had given us a tonking – everyone who played us knew we weren’t a soft touch. They knew they’d been in a game. But then if you lose eight-nil everyone else thinks they can do that to you.

“So I think there was a resolve to go out and win the second half or draw it. So we just wanted to get a foothold in the game.”

Harper was first out of the dressing room. “I always used to come out early for the second half and I got a priceless piece of information from Andy Woodman, who was the goalkeeper coach, as we were walking out. He completely lightened the mood by saying: ‘None of the goals were your fault, lets just keep it that way!’ It made me laugh: no techincal information but it was probably what I needed,” he said.

From 4-0 down to 4-2:

Newcastle did not come racing out of the traps. They didn’t dare to. “We were so shell-shocked. We’re scared to break shape because they could counter attack, break and rattle in another two or three,” Barton remembers.

“We literally just had to stop them from scoring. We went out in that second half and thought ‘Don’t lose the second half’. If we draw the second half 0-0 we can go away, lick our wounds and look at what went wrong and recover.

“We were in damage limitation mode for the first 10 to 20 minutes. We just started creeping closer and closer to them then we got the goals. We got the second and I knew we were back in it. It’s very rare you’re 4-2 down and thinking ‘If I score again we’re going to have a chance to win this game’.”

Slowly Newcastle began to disrupt. Tackles were won, Arsenal were being knocked out of their stride. Nolan remembers it as Newcastle “earning the right to play all over again”.

“It wasn’t pretty stuff. We weren’t trying to necessarily get on the front foot, we just needed to earn the right to be in the game again and that meant working really, really hard to cover the space and exploit any little chink in their armour.”

Harper was not hopeful of a comeback: “If you’d said at 4-0 after 26 minutes we’d draw 4-4 I’d have thought you’d have been drinking all day,” he jokes.

But he was getting more hopeful with every second of that second half. “We just dug in. People talk about the beautiful game but that bunch of players were tough, streetwise and savvy and that’s what it was.

“It wasn’t scintillating football that got us back into it, it was like street football. We reverted to that in the second half to take them on: the physicality and the dark arts to claw our way back into the game. Joey was instrumental. He was great at that.”

Barton and Nolan were the club’s two most important players in terms of setting the tone. In the first half their impact had been negligible but it was a rare day when they did not have some influence – either on or off the pitch.

(Image: AFP)

“Joey was priceless and the pair of them had been brilliant for us in terms of standing up for ourselves again after relegation,” he said.

“In the Championship, him and Kevin Nolan: you’d be standing in the tunnel, lining up and you’ve got a full St James’ Park. It’s quite intimidating for players not used to playing in that kind of environment and he’d looked over at them and say: ‘Lads, look at this lot. They’re sh*tting themselves!’

“You can see them shrinking. You’re 2-0 up before you’ve started. Joey would be getting some grief off someone and he’d make a point of looking at the name on the back of their shirt and saying: ‘Sorry mate, I’ve never heard of you’. Winding people up. You wouldn’t encourage boys and girls to do it in kids football but it’s a part of the game and it’s a part of the game that group of players knew how to do. How many games did we win 1-0 without playing really well in?”

Five minutes had passed. Newcastle needed a spark. They required something to get the crowd involved and engaged again and on 50 minutes it arrived when Abou Diaby was sent off. Barton was pivotal.

“For me it was a case of personal pride. It’d been difficult for me that season because I’m a central midfielder but in that team I was playing more as a right-sided midfielder and in that position you’re depending on people in the central areas to get the ball to you.

“As a central midfielder you can drop deep and take the ball off the centre halves and maybe dictate the pace of the game. In the first half I’ve been on the periphery and I thought in the second half I can’t be like that.

(Image: AFP)

“If you remember the tackle on Diaby, I actually came into the centre of midfield and past two central midfielders. I think I tackled him over the half-way line on the left-hand side: I haven’t gone in to hurt him, I’ve just gone in to rattle his cage and say ‘Hey, you aren’t going to dictate this game. It’s not going to be exhibition football in the second half’.

“And he just snapped. It wasn’t even that bad of a tackle – it was hard but fair but he took objection to it and he grabbed me round the back of the neck. I thought ‘If he’s grabbed me here, if he gives me any excuse to get him sent off I’m going to get him sent off.’ I think he pushed me in the back, I went down and looked at the ref as if to say ‘What am I meant to do here?’”

When you watch it back, Diaby’s reaction is ridiculous. But the first man on the scene is Nolan, arching his back to Diaby as if to theatrically protect Barton. Diaby shoves him too. He had lost it.

It was a weakness in the opposition Barton had been waiting to prey on. “I’d had an issue with Arsenal a few times in the past. I would presume that Arsene Wenger had probably said something about it in the run-up: ‘Be careful because he will come and try to leave something on you’. I had done that to Samir Nasri at the Emirates when I first got out of jail and I’d had a good record against them, I’d scored a couple of times for City. I’d had a good time rattling their cages and I always had the feeling that they were very, very wary of me doing something in the grey area of the game – in between the rules.

“There’s always been issues playing against Arsenal and they were a side I’d loved playing against. I can remember playing against their sides with Henry, Overmars, Bergkamp when I was a young kid and this side wasn’t the side.

“As good as they were they had a vulnerability. They were 4-0 up and we just thought ‘We need to shock them out of playing this champagne football’. That tackle was the moment – that was the one instant where the momentum changed.”

The atmosphere changes in an instant. Suddenly St James’ Park’s seige mentality is back. “You just thought the crowd were back on our side in that instant,” Nolan recalls.

(Image: AFP)

Enrique goes one step further. “The noise was like we were back in the game already. It was fantastic. I have played in front of Anfield and at other big clubs with great atmospheres but St James’ Park when it is on your side is a special feeling. I don’t think I’ve ever felt the crowd right behind us when the team is 4-0 down but that is what it felt like. It was energy.”

Harper was perhaps less enthusiastic. “I remember at 4-1 the crowd lifted and I was thinking, pessimistically, ‘Now we’ll get a bit giddy, go forward, get picked apart and we’ll lose 7 or 8-1 here!’ But Joey just went to town. He was a master of the dark arts and that was brilliant.”

Danny Simpson went close. The clock is ticking but Newcastle win a penalty on 68 minutes, when Leon Best is shoved. Barton converts it, rolling it into the back of the net.

“Momentum is so huge in football, which is why I’m so angry about VAR. You could lose that momentum in the midst of checking those decisions,” Barton said.

“It’s the Abou Diaby sending off that just switches the momentum. They’d gone from purring, playing Rolls Royce football and pass, pass, pass to all of a sudden it being ‘Oh no, we’ve got ten men’ and the momentum in the stadium just shifted.

We never thought we’d get back to 4-4 but you could just feel the energy and the momentum. We got a goal back and I’m telling you, if that game goes on for five minutes more we’d have won that match because they were gone. Emotionally, they were gone.”

He has a point. There are 22 minutes to go, his team has a three goal advantage but when Nolan tries to recover the ball from the net Szczesny holds onto it, as if playing for time.

Nolan grabs the goalkeeper round the head and a melee ensues. To the letter of the law the referee Phil Dowd should send him off, but – somehow – there’s no punishment. Arsenal look rattled.

Best then converts a second but it’s disallowed – wrongly – for offside. Newcastle are out of damage limitation mode. “I started to think we could win it,” Nolan chuckles. “I really did.”

Then with 15 minutes to go Best does score. Nolan again hares into the net to get the ball and hears something. “Kevin Nolan goes to get the ball out of the net Wojciech Szczesny said ‘We’ve gone’,” Harper said.

“That went round us all like wild fire. The momentum shift was incredible. We rode that momentum.

“When Szczesny said that ‘We’ve gone’. The players were aware of it, the crowd can sense that too and things were going for us too. The Williamson penalty was never a penalty but when you create that cauldron, that atmosphere and that pressure, that’s what happens.”

Back to 4-3 - and within sight:

Nile Ranger is on as a substitute and plays arguably the finest minutes of his professional career. Within seconds he makes a rangey run into the box and stings the palms of Szczesny. The noise raises a decibel ahead of the corner. Newcastle are creating enough chances now.

“I think you have to believe. I think even at 4-0 down we always believed in ourselves to do something,” Enrique said. Down the left-hand side for Newcastle, his understanding with Jonas Gutierrez has been outstanding. “I was playing among friends. They weren’t just team-mates, they were friends and when you’re doing that you want to play.”

Nine minutes to go now. Enrique plays a one-two with Coloccini and Cesc Fabregas lifts a leg to bring him down. It’s a lazy, tired foul intended to stop rather than win the ball. Barton’s free-kick is high and hopeful and Mike Williamson at the far post tries to win it. Two Arsenal defenders obstruct him but it doesn’t look like a penalty in the cold light of day.

In that cauldron it looked nailed on. “When there’s that much momentum and energy in the stadium you can imagine the referee getting caught up in that. The fans sensed blood,” Barton says.

The noise rises. Trevor Massey, the referee’s assistant, says it was a foul. Phil Dowd points to the spot again. Szczesny gets a leg to the spot kick but Barton’s shot, straight down the middle, is too strong. “It was a ridiculous penalty to make it 4-3 and by then it’s a cauldron. That’s when St James’ Park is at its best,” Harper says.

Cheick Tiote's goal:

There are seven minutes to go. “Arsenal are gone now, they’re gone,” Barton recalls.

You can see it in Tomas Rosicky’s foul on Barton on 83 minutes. He barges him just outside the penalty area. He’s a substitute, only on for a quarter of an hour but he looks drained by it. Barton steps up and swings the ball into the box but a defensive header meets it. Cheick Tiote is running towards the ball, raising his weaker left leg to meet it with a volley.

“I always remember the ball falling to him on his left foot, Cheick 30-35 yards out and unleashing this volley. It was like slow motion for me,” Nolan says.

“Then Joey’s free-kick comes out and I’m right behind it. Honestly I couldn’t have a better view of it,” Harper says.

Tiote’s shot is perfect. It clears the defenders and bends beautifully away from Szczesny.

“He never used to do it on the training field. I used to joke that he’d tried to control and shinned it in from 25 yards,” Harper laughs.

“I think that was what made it so special because Cheick was like Joey in that respect. He used to break up the play and didn’t score. That was the icing on the cake that it was Cheick of all people who scored the goal.”

The noise in the stadium is like a 747 taking off. Tiote runs the length of the field. Later on, he tells his friends he doesn’t remember anything about the aftermath – snapping back into it with a pile of players on top of him thinking ‘What just happened?’

“It was surreal. He ran the length of the pitch and I lost the plot as well! I just remember standing there thinking there’s a big pile of players there and if I jump on them I’m going to do some damage,” Harper says.

(Image: PA)

“So why I did it, I don’t know! I did the People’s Elbow and I elbowed Leon Best in the hamstring and he went into spasm and had to go off. If he hadn’t we might have won the game. The guy who shouted ‘Hurry up’ in the Gallowgate beforehand might have been right...”

In the press box, Justin Lockwood is commentating alongside Bob Moncur - the last man to lift silverware for Newcastle – for Real Radio. “To be honest at 4-0 down you’re just thinking ‘How do we keep people listening to this?’ It was awful. You’re looking for something to say when you’re shell-shocked yourself,” he recalls.

He wouldn’t know that the game was to be one of his crowning commentary moments. “When it got back to 4-2 you thought ‘It’s on here’.” He told the listeners: “We could be on for a grandstand finish”.

When the ball dropped to Tiote, it was bedlam in the press box. “There’s an etiquette in there that you’re not meant to cheer Newcastle’s goals – I’ve never really been one to follow that etiquette but I turned round and everyone was on their feet cheering! Bob and me were kicking each other under the desk, we couldn’t believe it.”

Here’s the commentary: ‘Barton’s delivery comes in, it’s a teasing one. Headed away. CHEICK TIOTE!” Then comes a guttural roar: you can hear Moncur laughing with disbelief. “Boom, boom, Cheick, Cheick the room. What a strike! What a goal! What a comeback! What a game! There are no words to describe it!”

Seven years on, he’s still not sure where it came from. “You can never think to yourself beforehand. What if Cheick Tiote scores a volley to make it 4-4 after they’re four down after 19 minutes? You just have to go on the emotion of it. And boy it was emotional.”

Newcastle are not finished. There’s five minutes of injury time – Ranger chests the ball to Nolan, who volleys inches wide. “I thought it was in. It couldn’t have been much closer,” the skipper recalls.

The whistle goes. There has never been a roar like it for a draw at St James’ Park. The greatest ever comeback in the Premier League? If not that, it’s not far off.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

“I just remember sitting in the dressing room afterwards, completely emotionally shot. I’ve always said that Newcastle is an emotional rollercoaster and that was the rollercoaster of being a professional footballer in 90 minutes: to thinking ‘This could be ten’ to nearly winning the game in an hour and a half,” Harper says.

Here’s Enrique: “After that moment, nothing felt impossible in football to me. When Leicester won the league it was the same magic. It’s why we loved the game. We were celebrating in the dressing room. We were brothers. When you go through something like that you get stronger.”

The aftermath:

Newcastle finished 12th that season but there was a bigger narrative at play. The drive and determination of the team that day typified the team spirit and togetherness that the side had. It was a precious commodity forged in the Championship. Pardew – who benefited from the impetuous reaction of Ashley and Llambias to the bonus row – counselled that it should not be broken up easily.

He was ignored. The players demanded the Carroll money was spent but the reaction was to break up the team. Nolan was sold, Barton too. Enrique demanded to go, causing the first flicker of resentment from the club’s influential Spanish players.

It ended acrimoniously. The players were painted as the problem when they were trying to stand up to the changes. A new team shipped in from overseas replaced those who were the genesis comeback and had a good season, finishing fifth. But those who left, speaking for the first time, feel the club went the wrong way.

“It is my greatest regret in football,” says Nolan of leaving Newcastle.

“We had a great team there, a great togetherness and a spirit that doesn’t come easily. It was forged in the Championship, where we’d had to fight for each other. We weren’t maybe the greatest technically but we had this spirit about us. We didn’t fear anyone in the Premier League even though we had just come up and we had added some good players in Cheick and Hatem Ben Arfa, who was injured.

“I felt like what was required in the summer was to just add a few players of quality to what we already had and we’d have kicked on again and I think that’s what the manager wanted as well but his hands were tied. Alan (Pardew) did a great job at Newcastle initially and I think if he’d had the option to go his way, the team would have been kept together but that’s not what the owner wanted and I think he made a big mistake because there was an opportunity there.

“At the time it was a top four, it wasn’t the top six it is now with Spurs in there and maybe Everton on the outside. If we’d have done the right things and made the right decisions and kept that spirit I think Newcastle would have been in the top six now. We had that momentum, we had the crowd on our side and we were a team that represented Newcastle United well.

“But they went a different way, preferring the players they did and we’ll never know. But it was such a massive regret for me to leave. I don’t think any of us really had a choice but to leave. They made it difficult for us to stay.”

Barton goes further. “I just don’t think they understand football. The decisions they made, the decisions they make – it goes to show they don’t understand it. Even now with the nonsense surrounding the takeover and doing the business so late to handicap Rafa a bit, it’s no different.

“They don’t actually fully understand what they had. What had happened – Joe Kinnear coming in, then replaced by Alan Shearer and then the team getting relegated, to patch that up with Chris Hughton and Col Calderwood was a brilliant job. I’ve played in sides that have won the Championship and got promoted and people forget how well and how easily we won it. We won it going away from teams.

“Then to go up first season we were never in any danger of going down. It was about power and control, that was how they operated. It’s sad for Newcastle and for us. We all loved playing for the club and I would have loved to have finished my playing career at Newcastle.

“I really enjoyed my football but they decided there was a strong core in that dressing room. It was a really healthy atmosphere in there – we had a strong core of lads who had been there for a while plus a great set of foreign lads, the younger pros as well and we all cared. But the bonus row was what I was led to believe was behind us getting broken up. It was why Chris was sacked, because he didn’t have that control.

“So they changed us so they could more easily control the dressing room but they got relegated not too long afterwards and we’ll see whether they stay up this year. It’s sad really because you could see in the performances how much we loved the club. Coming back from four-nil down was a testament to that commitment.”

Harper agrees: “The dressing room took care of itself. Me and Nobby did some of that but more Nobby, who was a brilliant captain: he kept a close eye on Joey, noticed the warning signs.

“He was a real catalyst in that too. It was a bunch of players who could play but if they weren’t playing well they knew how to get a result as well. They were brilliant at game management and it is a shame because collectively it was a powerful group. Maybe too powerful for some.

“Whatever we lacked technically, we more than made it for it physically, tactically and mentally. It was a very strong group mentally. There are the four corners in coaching and three of them were incredibly strong.

“Everybody talks about the Leyton Orient game. A lot of what happened in that game goes back to the Monday morning after the Leyton Orient match when we had the meeting asking ‘Who’s in and who’s out’. We didn’t have an issue with anyone wanting to leave as long as they put a shift in until they went.

“Coming out of that meeting you could look at everyone in the eye and think ‘They’ve got my back’ and they know I’ve got theirs. Let’s go and have a go. That was the spirit that was embedded then and that came through in that game.”

Watch: 10 years of Mike Ashley... in 30 seconds

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Cheick Tiote, RIP:

One player who did stay was Tiote. He was loved at Newcastle, from announcing himself on his very first day at training – a callow young player arriving from FC Twente with no English and no fear.

His first act was to tackle Barton twice – hard.

“He was ferocious on the training ground. I remember when he first signed he tackled me really, really ferociously a couple of times and I turned to Chris Hughton and said: ‘What’s going on here? Am I meant to respond?’ He said: ‘I don’t think he means it like that’,” he said.

“I’d never met him before and I’m thinking ‘Who is this lunatic we’ve brought in? He’s going in full bore in training, smashing everyone’. But when you got to know Cheick that was just how he was and off-the-pitch he was a lovable guy. A great teammate.

(Image: Getty Images Europe)

“People forget just how good a player he was. There was talk of big moves away and I’ll not forget just how good he was with Kevin Nolan and how he used to hold the centre of the pitch. I was playing out wide because they had such a good understanding in the middle of the pitch. He’d get a yellow card in virtually every game but he allowed Kevin to get on the front foot.”

It was typical Tiote. Leon Best once said that you could hear Tiote coming in training. He did not give an inch. Pardew – who regarded him as a ‘second son’ – would often have to stop training to tell Tiote to wind it back in.

But he had a kind heart. He was a clothes horse who loved his designer labels, but after a few weeks if he’d worn things a few times he would donate them to a local charity shop in Jesmond.

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He sent thousands back to friends and family in Yamoussoukro. His extended family was into the hundreds and that perhaps explains why he ended his career looking for one last, big money move.

Harper says: “I used to get changed next to him. He was an infectious personality and he was really funny. A really good guy. He was excellent in the first season when he just sat in front of the back four and broke it up. Then he started to wander a bit, rather than sticking to his strengths.

“I remember one training session Coloccini had to stop the session because Cheick had wandered up to the left wing. Colo had to stop it and say: ‘Cheick, you play there - you don’t go up there’. I remember that vividly.

“Warm personality, very effective player when he did what his strengths were. And what a goal: it made me do the people’s elbow!”

Nolan says he was a better player than people remember. “He was my favourite player to play alongside. He just made me better. Maybe he was ahead of his time. A few years later N’Golo Kante won the player of the year award two years running and Cheick was as good on his day.

“I love him. He used to call me his brother and I felt like he was family. It hit me really hard when he died – I think it did all of us.”

Tiote perhaps stayed at Newcastle too long. Lockwood, now working for the club in the corporate boxes, remembers introducing Tiote to one set of match-day guests in the Championship season. “He just wanted to play football again. He’d not lost that and I thought when he went to China it would be a fresh start,” he said.

“He was such a lovely, lovely guy and a real Newcastle hero. I hope he gets remembered that way in the years to come and I think he will, because the way he left the club shouldn’t be what people remember.”

Seven years on from the goal he scored to cap Newcastle’s most memorable comeback, Tiote’s memory still burns brightly at the club’s training ground, where they hang pictures of current players on the walls. It is a constant churn of pictures, with players who move on replaced by a new generation.

One player’s portrait remains in the corridor that links the reception to the dressing room. It is Tiote, Sergio Aguero nipping at his heels, concentration etched on his face, speaking volumes of the burning desire that typified his crowning glory at St James’. It will never be moved.