Kevin Keegan described it as a virus sweeping through his Newcastle dressing room. At Manchester City, Roberto Mancini likened it to a snowball gathering pace down a mountain side.
Mancini’s team eventually got out of the way. They won their Premier League title in 2012, even after convincing themselves they had thrown it all away.
‘Sometimes it still feels like a miracle,’ Mancini told Daily Mail Sport during a chance meeting at an airport. ‘I thought it was gone.’
For Keegan, on the other hand, there were to be no second chances. His team of exhilarating footballers blew their chance to become champions of England 30 years ago. Newcastle led Manchester United by 12 points in late January 1996 but still didn’t win the title.
‘I still have nightmares about the way we gave it away. Half a dozen of the players who had performed so well suddenly became so nervous that they couldn’t put their game together,’ wrote Keegan in his autobiography.
‘The virus spread through the team and that is what gave Manchester United their chance. We had a well-oiled machine and then the bits fell off.’
Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal have stopped scoring goals. All of a sudden they look and sound nervous and in all likelihood that’s because they are
Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United led Manchester United by 12 points in late January 1996 but still didn’t win the title
It is hard to know exactly how Mikel Arteta and Arsenal feel today but it’s not hard to guess. The Premier League leaders face second-placed Manchester City on Sunday at the Etihad Stadium with a six-point lead at the top.
But Arsenal have just lost at home to Bournemouth and seen their domestic cup hopes die after defeats in the FA Cup at Southampton of the Championship and in the Carabao Cup final against City at Wembley.
Arsenal are not playing well, either. They have stopped scoring goals. All of a sudden they look and sound nervous and in all likelihood that’s because they are.
‘You can’t escape it,’ says former Newcastle central defender Steve Howey, a key member of Keegan’s team. ‘For us it felt like the pressure and the expectation was everywhere and I don’t see why – with social media and everything – it won’t be exactly the same for Arsenal.
‘Newcastle hadn’t won the league for years and obviously they still haven’t. It’s been a while for Arsenal too. So you don’t just feel desperate to win it for yourself, you feel a responsibility to do it for all those fans as well.
‘You try and keep your routines and do the right things. But yes, it can get to you.
‘We’re footballers, but we are all human.’
‘For us it felt like the pressure and the expectation was everywhere,’ says Steve Howey (second right) who was part of that Newcastle team pipped by United
Keegan lauches into his infamous ‘I would love it’ rant in 1996. But it backfired as it permeated the quiet of the Newcastle dressing room
It’s not unusual for a title race to swing back and forth but full-on Devon Loch-like collapses are actually quite rare. What was unusual about 2012 was that both Manchester teams managed to mess it up before City squeaked home courtesy of Sergio Aguero’s once-in-a-lifetime moment against Queens Park Rangers.
Mancini’s City seemed to be in control of that title as they looked to win the league for the first time in 44 years. But defeats by Arsenal and Swansea and draws with Stoke and Sunderland handed the initiative and the lead to their neighbours.
Indeed, such was City’s despair that Micah Richards actually afforded Daily Mail Sport an early-April interview in which he all but conceded defeat.
‘For seven months we have been on top of the league playing good football but now, when it really matters, we have for some reason taken the foot off the gas,’ Richards told us at the time.
‘Football is full of emotions. You get angry and happy but I have never wanted to cry before. That is how much it means. To see United come like this is horrendous. It kills me.’
Proof, then, that it’s never wise to give up too early. Six games and six wins later, City were champions and the tears belonged to United. Indeed, sometimes it can all change not just because of what you do, but also because of what someone else fails to do.
A pivotal figure in that title denouement was United defender Patrice Evra. United had lost 1-0 at Wigan a week after that Richards interview – a night when kitman Albert Morgan somehow forgot the insoles for boots belonging to Michael Carrick and Ryan Giggs – but after beating Aston Villa 4-0 in their next game Sir Alex Ferguson’s team were comfortable once more.
They were leading Everton 4-2 with seven minutes to go at Old Trafford when Evra planted a simple headed chance against the post. The game somehow ended 4-4 and City – winning later that same day at Wolves – were back in a race they would win.
‘The manager was raging at me after that game,’ Evra told Daily Mail Sport in an interview to promote his book. ‘He said it was my fault, that I should have scored. He accused us all of giving the trophy to City. He was right, wasn’t he? I love him but that afternoon he was different. The pain turned to anger and I had to take it.’
City squeaked home in 2012 courtesy of Sergio Aguero’s once-in-a-lifetime moment against Queens Park Rangers
In the 2012 title race, United were leading Everton 4-2 with seven minutes to go at Old Trafford when Patrice Evra missed a good chance. The game ended 4-4
Pressure. It gets to everybody in a title race, especially when a lead starts to slip. Players and managers do and say things they don’t usually do. They look for answers.
Arteta maybe thought he was playing a cute card last week when he encouraged the Arsenal fans to ‘bring your lunch, bring your dinner’ in a bid to whip up the crowd ahead of the Bournemouth game. But it backfired. The occasion seemed to get to his players.
Back in 1996, Keegan let rip at Ferguson on TV after the United manager appeared to suggest Leeds needed to up their effort levels for a forthcoming game against Newcastle.
‘I would love it if we beat them (United),’ is a line that has followed Keegan through the years. More importantly, it permeated the quiet of the Newcastle dressing room.
‘I won’t lie to you,’ says Howey. ‘We heard it and said to each other, “Has he lost the plot?”. I mean, that was why we loved Kevin. He was emotional and all in. But we knew Sir Alex Ferguson would have been watching and smiling.’
Arteta is generally less quotable than a manager like Keegan or indeed Mancini and even Ferguson. On the whole that serves him well. The media does play a part when the season reaches this stage. Ferguson used to hide the newspapers from his players in the United training ground canteen while another old hand had his own methods.
‘I would tell the players to be very careful what they said to the press at that stage,’ Neil Warnock, veteran of eight promotions, tells Daily Mail Sport. ‘Don’t wind the opposition up unnecessarily by saying something daft. Don’t give us a problem we don’t need. And I would tell them to be careful about what they said to their mates because their mates don’t always turn out to be their mates. Not in football. The last thing you need in those weeks is stuff leaking out to the newspapers.
‘Training has to be normal in that it has to be disciplined. But at the same time it has to be a bit light-hearted with some humour around. Otherwise the intensity of it all can crush you. You can be standing there in a training session or on the touchline in the rain with water dripping off your nose and your mind whirling like a washing machine.
‘But you can’t let the players see any of that. They would always need you to be absolutely normal. That was so important.’
Keegan gets to grips with Sir Alex Ferguson as they meet at the end of the 1995-96 season in which United overtook Newcastle to win the league
At Newcastle, Keegan did change things. He changed his team and some of his tactics – ostracising John Beresford simply because he swore at him during a game against Aston Villa – while the players ditched their regular Tuesday night out on the Quayside.
‘Those nights helped us, as we relaxed,’ says Howey now. ‘Maybe we should have stuck to that routine. It was what we did. It was normal. And when you feel like everything is on the line and on the verge of slipping away, you need as much normality as you can get.’
For all that City have a game in hand this season – against Burnley on Wednesday – Arsenal’s destiny remains in their own possession. So did Liverpool’s in 2014, mind, and that didn’t work out well. Captain from that time, Steven Gerrard, has previously told us that he ‘thinks every day’ about the slip that handed a goal to Demba Ba at Anfield, a win to Chelsea and, ultimately, a league title to City.
And what about little Walsall of League Two? The Sadlers were 12 points clear at the top in mid-January last year and 15 points clear of the first play-off place. Yet an astonishing collapse saw them miss out on automatic promotion when Bradford scored a 96th-minute winner against Fleetwood on the last day of the season. Bradford went up and are now fourth in League One. Walsall lost in the play-off final and are now in the bottom half of League Two.
These are how fine the lines can be between success and devastation when things go right or go wrong. It’s perhaps easier to chase than to lead, especially when you haven’t done it before.
Arsenal hunted down Ferguson’s United in 1998 – coming from 12 points back to triumph – and right back Lee Dixon tells us: ‘The whole atmosphere changes. At the club and around the dressing room. Suddenly you look at the bloke across from you and ask yourself if he really has what it takes. If the answer is yes then you tend to think you will be OK.’
That year Arsenal served a killer blow with a 1-0 win at United in mid-March – Marc Overmars scoring.
City beat United by the same score at the Etihad eight days after their rivals’ 4-4 with Everton back in 2012 while in 1996 it was an Eric Cantona goal that downed Newcastle at St James’ Park and helped Ferguson’s team reel in Keegan’s faltering Newcastle.
Marc Overmars helped Arsenal overturn a 12-point deficit to beat Manchester United to the 1998 Premier League title
Steven Gerrard (left) can’t stop Chelsea’s Demba Ba scoring at Anfield in 2014. The goal – after Gerrard’s slip – was a massive factor in Liverpool losing out on the title to City
‘Peter Schmeichel was amazing that night,’ recalls Howey. ‘He saved everything. We eventually played together at Manchester City but I refused to ever talk to him about it. I knew he wanted to but I was never going to discuss it with him.
‘I am talking to you three decades since all this happened. And I still feel that pain. I watch the football on the TV and see someone lifting up the Premier League trophy. It hurts because I know it should have been me, should have been us.
‘We had the best team and Arsenal have the best squad now. But that’s not always the thing that matters. We hadn’t done it before and United had. Maybe that played a part. We should be a team that’s remembered for winning the league but we aren’t. Second is nowhere, as they say.
‘You asked me how long it took me to process what happened. The truth is I am still doing it.’
