64 mins: A disputed free kick was played into the box by Nicky Summerbee, and the ball went straight to the unguarded head of Niall Quinn 1-1

72 mins: Shearer was now on the pitch, but again the action was at the wrong end, Kevin Phillips fed by Summerbee and seeing his first attempt cannon back off Tommy Wright, before whipping in the rebound in the style of Colin West at the same end many years before. 1-2

Full time: Newcastle 1 mackems 2

wheese key? Gullit the following day

Ruud Gullit said:
 
To follow

Magpies coach John Carver later recalled:

"We were at the old training ground and Durham Cricket Club, and I was in the room with Steve Clarke and Ruud. All of a sudden, he started talking about what the team was going to be against Sunderland. “I said ‘sorry Ruud, what did you say there?’. He said he was going to leave out Alan and Duncan, and this was going to be the team. I said ‘do you know how important this game is?’. 

"He used to call everyone ‘lovely boy’, and his exact words were ‘lovely boy, I have played in some massive derbies. I’ve played in them in Holland, London derbies, and I played in the Milan derby too’. “I said ‘yeah, but do you actually know what this means?’. 

"He said ‘I’ve already told you – I’ve played in massive derbies’. “I went ‘yeah, but you haven’t played in one like this Ruud’. I turned to Steve Clarke and said ‘he hasn’t been involved in a game like this, I’m telling you now’. 

"And then we just walked out of the room. I then continued the conversation with Steve Clarke, because he half understood where I was coming from because of the relationship we had, but I don’t think Ruud did. He just seemed set on the fact that was what he was going to do, and that was the team he was going to put on the pitch. 

"I talked about it being a motivation for the opposition. Reidy (Peter Reid) was the manager at the time, so I said ‘this will be a motivation for Peter when he sees that Alan Shearer and Duncan Ferguson are not on the teamsheet’. “But he had no concerns whatsoever. 

"I actually thought ‘if we don’t win it, he’s gone’. This was before it all happened, and I said to Steve (Clarke) ‘is he writing his resignation now before the game?’. 

"Steve didn’t comment, because he was quite tight to Ruud. Then we played the game.” 

“We were 1-0 up, then the equaliser, then 2-1, and the heavens opened. I walked in afterwards and there’s Ruud in the room writing on his pad. I said to him ‘what are you doing?’ He said ‘you know what I’m doing lovely boy’. 

"I just shut the door and walked out, and found out what had happened the next day. 

"I was there, and it was a dreadful night all round. It was pouring down, the stand was open and everyone had macs on.” 

Paul Robinson added:

"I was in training on the Monday and still had my bib on when I was called to one side and told I’d be starting against Sunderland. I just remember phoning my dad and him saying ‘I’m happy for you, just don’t score’. 

"It was quite a strange feeling. To think that I was keeping an absolute legend and England centre forward out of the team – along with ‘Big Dunc’ (Duncan Ferguson) – was surreal. However, they both shook my hand and wished me the best. There was no nastiness at all from them.”

"All my family and friends are Sunderland through and through, but they also wanted Newcastle to win at the same time, because I was playing. I just wanted to win.

"It seemed as though people were thinking ‘who’s he?’ but I just had to go out and play. It wasn’t my decision as to who played and who didn’t, I just did my best while I was on the pitch. 

"(Bobby) Robson came in and reinstated all of the old heads – which is what was needed at that time, because we were down the bottom. Gullit believed in me and that was a massive confidence boost. I was playing the best football of my career, but I wasn’t in the team as much after he left. 

"Bobby was fantastic with me and the other youngsters but, if Gullit had stayed, then who knows what would have happened?” 

Monkey's heed:

To follow
 

I'm writing this over a week after this game, and just thinking about the events of Wednesday night makes an ache return to the very pit of my stomach. 

The last time I recall feeling as low as this following Newcastle United wasn't after a Cup final humiliation or hoying away the league, although they were torture of the white-poker variety. 

No, you have to return the start of the decade we're just leaving and the infamous second leg of the playoff final against the Wearside forces of darkness at Gallowgate - Eric Gates and Marco Gabbiadini tormentors-in-chief on another wet night. 

At the end of both games I left the ground shirtless, originally in shame at the antics of the idiots who invaded the pitch and second time round due to my drenched state and Christ-like belief that my suffering was for some greater purpose. 

Still, one improvement in a decade - at least I went to work the following day this time round, unlike the playoffs, when I took to my bed in the huff.

Now with the benefit of hindsight, there was a reason for the suffering last Wednesday; a spiritual cleansing of the club, courtesy of what can only be described as an Old Testament storm (what's in store for the visit of Sheffield Wednesday - a plague of locusts perhaps ?). 

One week later, the club has emerged, symbolically together in a black and white lifeboat, Shearer at the helm, the Dutch boy tossed overboard for the sharks and Bobby Robson cast in the part of Captain Birdseye. 

Whether we go down with all hands is still to be decided, but at least the public squabbling over the lifejackets that delighted the media has subsided.

How Ruud Gullit thought he would get away with dropping Shearer and playing bloody Maric against the mackems is beyond me - and if reports are to be believed, Chairman Freddy Shepherd even had to intervene for Shearer to be on the bench rather than in the stand. 

That and the decision to dispense with Ferguson was widely interpreted as the manager making a public statement of his intent to bugger off - one local reporter quipping that it wasn't a team sheet that he'd submitted but a suicide note.

The Milburn dwellers who sported white rain jackets looked from afar like a Ku Klux Klan enclave, waiting for the final whistle to sound before pouncing on Rudi and dragging him off for a lynching. That wooden cross will have been a bugger to light on a night like this though....

What to say of the game? That it was that it was difficult to actually watch Dyer score in the Leazes End from behind that goal because of the force of the rain hammering down? Definitely?

That it should have been halted to due to standing water on the pitch? Perhaps.

It's sad but undeniable though that the mackems came in their usual unskilful way but were miles ahead of us in grit, fight and determination - the sort of qualities needed for a derby match.

It was inevitable that Rudi would go once people started to turn against him, but still debatable just where Shearer will fit into the Brave New World of Bobby Robson. It would seem logical for him to be leading by example from the front, but whether Bobby agrees remains to be seen - like everything else, it could come down to finance and the need to generate funds, as per Les Ferdinand in 1997.

Imagine for a moment the scenario of a Shearer-less United beaten the Monkeys heed XI though, with the consequence of Rudi staying on and the number 9 shirt soon becoming vacant. 

In times to come, Wor Al may issue a quiet prayer that Niall Quinn and Kevin Philips did as much to secure his future on Tyneside post-Gullit as the England captain was able to do himself....

Biffa