Premier League history is littered with red letter days and Monday 29 April 1996 will for ever rank among the most memorable. Thirty years on, recollections of the aftermath of Newcastle\u2019s 1-0 victory at Leeds remain vivid. Keith Gillespie\u2019s goal saw Kevin Keegan\u2019s team move three points behind the leaders, Manchester United, with two fixtures remaining.<\/p>\n
Before Newcastle\u2019s visit to Elland Road, Sir Alex Ferguson craftily suggested that Leeds and Nottingham Forest \u2013 the team Keegan\u2019s players would visit three days later \u2013 would not try as hard as they had against his own side. Ferguson also pointedly reminded everyone Newcastle had agreed to provide the opposition for Stuart Pearce\u2019s testimonial by the Trent later in the year. This backdrop dictated that Keegan used a live post-match television interview with Richard Keys and Andy Gray of Sky Sports to claim the moral high ground while also walking straight into Ferguson\u2019s psychological trap.<\/p>\n
Rarely can a live link between Elland Road and a television studio have provided such TV gold, yet this four-minute treasure initially simmered along in gentle fashion before boiling over. The turning point came when Keys asked Keegan \u2013 whose \u201cEntertainers\u201d had been 12 points clear at the top of the table in January \u2013 if he blamed \u201ctension\u201d for Newcastle\u2019s slow start in West Yorkshire. The question may have been bland but it was also loaded and Keegan seized the bait.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think you can discount it,\u201d said Newcastle\u2019s manager. \u201cA lot of things have been said over the past few days, some of it almost slanderous.\u201d That clearly referenced Ferguson\u2019s claim, made on 17 April following United\u2019s 1-0 victory against Leeds at Old Trafford, that Howard Wilkinson\u2019s players had \u201ccheated\u201d their coach earlier in the season. \u201cWhy are they not in the top six,\u201d mused Ferguson. \u201cTo me they\u2019re cheating their manager. You wait and see the difference when they play Newcastle.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Scot was playing mind games and Keegan proved a study in righteous indignation. \u201cI\u2019ve kept really quiet but I\u2019ll tell you something, he went down in my estimation when he said that,\u201d he told Keys and Gray, temperature rising, finger relentlessly jabbing towards the camera. \u201cWe have not resorted to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou can tell him now, we\u2019re still fighting for this title and he\u2019s got to go to Middlesbrough and get something. And I\u2019ll tell you, honestly, I will love it if we beat them. Love it.\u201d<\/p>\n
In the proceeding decades Keegan, now 75 and starting to get out and about again after gruelling cancer treatment<\/a>, would become accustomed to strangers shouting \u201cLove it\u201d at him from passing car windows. Yet that iconic diatribe very nearly never took place. When Geoff Shreeves, the touchline reporter responsible for linking Keegan to the studio, inspected the small broadcast hut set to house Newcastle\u2019s manager he was hit by a noxious smell. Requests to Elland Road staff for air freshener fell on deaf ears. Eventually, a Leeds player lent Shreeves a can of deodorant and, with the interview salvaged, a history shaping stage was set.<\/p>\n Sir Alex Ferguson and his assistant Brian Kidd celebrating winning the 1996 Premier League title having gone to Middlesbrough and got something. Photograph: Getty Images<\/p>\n