Newcastle United fans have been reminded of Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer after a bizarre sending off for Everton against Manchester United.
Newcastle United beat Manchester City over the weekend, with the attention already shifting to the Champions League clash against Marseille.
Premier League action is still ongoing, though, as Manchester United hosted Everton on Monday night.
The game brought a quite remarkable moment, as Everton’s Idrissa Gueye was given a straight red card for slapping teammate Michael Keane.
This was the first Premier League red card for a player clashing with his own teammate since Stoke City’s Ricardo Fuller was dismissed against West Ham United for slapping Andy Griffin in 2008.
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Newcastle United fans will be reminded of Kieron Dyer’s fight with Lee Bowyer
Fuller’s incident may have been the most recent before Gueye, but the most famous teammate clash is certainly Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer.
Newcastle were beaten 3-0 at home by Aston Villa way back on 2 April 2005, in a truly dismal performance at St James’ Park.
Fans will remember Steven Taylor’s dramatic attempt to disguise his handball, but the game will be remembered for Dyer and Bowyer.
Already 3-0 down, tempers boiled over as Dyer and Bowyer began fighting off the ball.
Then-Newcastle manager Graeme Souness looked baffled on the sidelines as two of his players made a terrible day even worse.
The pair posed together and shook hands two days after the incident, claiming that everything had been resolved.
Bowyer ended up leaving Newcastle for West Ham United in 2006 before Dyer remarkably joined him in East London a year later.
Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer on Newcastle United fight
The duo have spoken about their much-publicised fight in the years since the incident.
Speaking to TalkSPORT in 2022, Bowyer completely refuted the idea that he and Dyer hated each other behind the scenes.
Bowyer put the whole thing down to a ‘moment of madness’, and regretted the rather ugly moment.
“A moment of madness,” said Bowyer.
“Obviously, people have opinions, and it goes from one extreme to another. Everyone puts two pence in – all of a sudden, it was me and Kieron hated each other, but that wasn’t the case.
“The case is, from my perspective, we’re playing in the same team, and like I’ve said on many occasions already today, winning is everything to me. It hurts me when I lose. We were losing 3-0 at the time, we were playing Aston Villa. We were both competing in the same position, we were both similar players, we wanted to get forward and score goals from midfield.
“I felt at the time during the game that I was in goal scoring positions and, as simple as this is, I felt he could’ve passed me the ball. I could have maybe scored for the team, made the score different. It happened on a few occasions through the game, and I was just saying to him, ‘Just pass me the ball, what are you doing?’, obviously it was 3-0, and it was right towards the end of the game.
“I said to him, ‘Pass me the ball’… obviously and a little bit more than that, then he said something back, and we ended up walking towards each other, and the rest is history. Do I regret it? Of course I do. Nobody wants to do that, especially on the big stage, but it’s passion,” he added.
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Dyer also spoke to TalkSPORT in 2024, playing down the idea that the two players had a pre-existing tension.
Dyer claims the duo are still friends now, and it was all sparked by Bowyer believing Dyer wasn’t passing him the ball enough.
“We’re still mates now. Everyone thought there was some hidden agenda behind it. In Newcastle, there were loads of rumours about ‘I’d done this’, or ‘he’d done that’, it was all nonsense, it was just… he is a hot head on the football pitch. I think he’d openly admit it. He’s had loads of red cards!
“I didn’t pass him the ball. He had this bee in his bonnet all game that I wasn’t passing him the ball. He’s getting more and more wound up, and we’re 3-0 down at the time, we’d got a man sent off and then yeah, he came short again, and I passed it on the other side of the pitch, and he just went mad,” he added.
Gueye’s red card certainly wasn’t as dramatic, and any future scuffles between teammates will have a job to eclipse that Dyer and Bowyer moment.
The post Idrissa Gueye’s red card evokes memories of Lee Bowyer and Kieron Dyer’s clash at Newcastle United appeared first on Geordie Boot Boys.