the players with the most time on the ball when 4–4–2 played 4–4–2, invariably the battle of formations during this period. Right-back Henning Berg was more of a converted centre-back, so there was a huge emphasis on left-back Le Saux to push forward, and he had a fine relationship with Wilcox and Shearer, supplying many key assists, most notably hanging a cross up for Shearer to nod home in Blackburn’s penultimate match of the campaign, a 1–0 victory over Newcastle.
Crucially, Harford demanded that crosses were played from what he termed ‘the magic box’, the space in the final 18 yards, as if the penalty area extended across the entire width of the pitch. Shearer disagreed with this concept and was confident he could convert crosses played from deeper – the type of ball David Beckham would later supply him with at international level – but Harford believed crosses from advanced positions created better chances, and Wilcox and Ripley depended upon getting into this ‘magic box’ to a staggering extent. Midway through the title-winning season, Dalglish called Ripley aside in training and attempted to devise a plan B. Eventually, he reasoned, opposition full-backs would work out Blackburn’s plan and usher Ripley and Wilcox inside. In that situation, 40 yards from goal, in a narrower position and forced onto his weaker foot, Dalglish asked where Ripley wanted the strikers to position themselves to be a target for crosses. Ripley looked at him blankly. ‘Are you taking the piss?’ he asked. No, insisted Dalglish. Ripley thought about it some more. ‘I don’t know,’ he admitted. The thought had never occurred to him; Blackburn’s wingers literally only knew how to play one way.
Blackburn’s tactical naivety was highlighted when they encountered continental opposition. In the opening round of the UEFA Cup, the club’s first-ever game in European competition, they were drawn against Swedish part-timers Trelleborg. The nature of Trelleborg read like a stereotypical ‘European minnow’ checklist; they boasted just one full-time professional footballer, alongside a carpenter, a shopkeeper and an insurance salesman. They’d recently lost a domestic cup tie to third-division opposition, and had progressed through the UEFA Cup qualifying round with an unspectacular victory over the champions of the Faroe Islands. They arrived at Ewood Park to discover their kit clashed with Blackburn’s, so were forced to borrow Rovers’ red away shorts. Journalists had researched Blackburn’s record victory, suspecting it could be surpassed, while the Swedes later claimed they would have considered a 2–0 defeat a decent result. Instead, Trelleborg’s Frederik Sandell latched onto strike partner Joachim Karlsson’s flick-on to score the game’s only goal. Trelleborg defended deeper than anyone Blackburn faced in the Premier League and focused on doubling up against Blackburn’s wingers. ‘If you were organised you could stop them,’ said captain Jonas Brorsson.
‘There was potentially a bit of naivety in the way we played,’ Ripley later recalled. ‘We were steamrollering teams in England and I think we tried to do the same, but they came with a defensive formation and nicked the win.’ Le Saux, meanwhile, admitted Blackburn’s style didn’t suit European competition. The second leg finished 2–2 – the SAS both scored close-range efforts in the aftermath of set-pieces – and ten-man Trelleborg progressed 3–2 on aggregate. The early exit emphasised English clubs’ tactical inadequacy, but allowed Blackburn to concentrate on domestic football.
There were no defining victories during Blackburn’s title campaign – they lost home and away to their closest challengers, Manchester United, and stuttered badly during the run-in, but their simple approach proved enough to consistently defeat run-of-the-mill Premier League sides. Blackburn weren’t doing anything different, they were simply doing it in an extremely cohesive manner, with excellent players. Six of their starting XI (goalkeeper Tim Flowers, commanding centre-back Colin Hendry plus Le Saux, Sherwood, Sutton and Shearer) featured in the PFA Team of the Year, which was announced before Blackburn sealed their title.
Manchester United had clinched the first two Premier League titles anticlimactically when rivals slipped up, but 14 May 1995 was truly memorable, as the Premier League’s first final-day decider. Blackburn went 1–0 up at Liverpool when Shearer typically converted Ripley’s right-wing cross, and had Rovers maintained that scoreline, they were champions regardless of United’s result. But Liverpool produced an unlikely turnaround, with Jamie Redknapp’s superb late free-kick confirming a 2–1 home victory. Dalglish spent much of the second half watching a TV close to the dugouts, showing the action from Manchester United’s game at Upton Park: Sir Alex Ferguson’s decision to play a lone striker backfired, and West Ham’s Ludĕk Mikloško provided one of the Premier League’s all-time great goalkeeping displays. United could only draw 1–1, which meant Blackburn’s defeat was irrelevant – they were champions. Dalglish was congratulated by old friends from Liverpool’s backroom staff, Shearer and Sutton warmly embraced, Sherwood lifted the trophy.
For all this incredible drama, Blackburn’s previous visit to Merseyside was more significant stylistically. On April Fools’ Day, Blackburn stormed into an early 2–0 lead at Everton; the first goal came inside 13 seconds, then the quickest to date in the Premier League, when Berg’s long ball was headed on by Sutton, then by Shearer, and Sutton fired home. The second came after a free-kick found Sutton, who stumbled and allowed Shearer to fire home. It was textbook Blackburn. But then, after Graham Stuart got Everton back into the game with a stupendous chip, Blackburn embarked upon a remarkably blatant display of cynical football, concentrating upon breaking up play and time wasting. It was an incredibly fierce, frantic contest, with the highlight an incredible goalmouth scramble in front of Tim Flowers, which featured no fewer than 14 players inside Blackburn’s six-yard box. The climax saw Shearer thumping a clearance so far that he nearly sent the ball out of Goodison Park entirely. At full-time, Everton’s fans booed Blackburn off. Dalglish couldn’t care less about whether opposition supporters appreciated his side’s style of play. To him it was three points, and job done.
In stark contrast, when Kevin Keegan was asked for his favourite memory from Newcastle’s ‘nearly’ campaign of 1995/96, he recalled his players being applauded onto the pitch by opposition fans during the final few days of the season, away at Leeds and Nottingham Forest. Dalglish called his Blackburn side the ‘people’s champions’, playing on their underdog status, but Newcastle were the true neutral’s favourite, a team who played enthralling, attack-minded football. Keegan’s impact during this period was incredible; he took the club from the bottom-half of the second tier to the top of the Premier League, galvanising a whole city. Newcastle’s shirts displayed the blue star of the Newcastle Brown Ale logo, their goalkeeper’s shirt during 1995/96 depicted the city’s skyline, while Keegan spoke about the club’s cultural importance to the city in a manner that recalled Barcelona. At times their football was comparable too, and Newcastle were referred to as, simply, The Entertainers.
Newcastle earned that nickname a couple of seasons earlier, with a 4–2 victory over Sheffield Wednesday, but 1995/96 took things to a new level, and Newcastle’s title challenge was somehow befitting of British pop culture at the time. 1996 was the year of England hosting, and threatening to win, Euro 96, soundtracked by Baddiel and Skinner’s ‘Three Lions’. 1996 was when Britpop still reigned supreme. 1996 saw the launch of Chris Evans’s TFI Friday, a programme based largely around wackiness, and the debut of the loud, extroverted Spice Girls. 1996 was the year of Trainspotting, a film about a group of heroin addicts that managed to become a feelgood story. Somehow 1997 felt very different, a melancholy year dominated by the film Titanic, Radiohead’s OK Computer and the death of Princess Diana. 1996 was about mad-for-it extravagance, and here were Keegan’s Newcastle, The Entertainers, playing all-out-attack football with no regard for the consequences.
Newcastle started the season, like Blackburn the previous year, with tactics based around crossing. Left-winger David Ginola was signed from Paris Saint-Germain and bamboozled opposition right-backs with his pace and ambidexterity, able to receive the ball with his back to goal, before spinning either way, cutting inside or going down the touchline. He won Player of the Month immediately. On the opposite flank Keith Gillespie was a typical winger of that period, always reaching the byline. Keegan’s instructions to his wingers were simple: new signing Les
