Here at The Mag we invited a number of regular/irregular contributors to give us their Newcastle United heroes and villains.
Our thanks to Peter Scraton for taking up the challenge.
Peter has looked back at his Newcastle United heroes and villains across the various decades when he has been supporting NUFC.
I have supported Newcastle United all my life. I am 66 now, so the club has been part of my life for more than sixty years.
When you support the same club for that long, football becomes a way of measuring time. You remember players, managers, promotions, relegations, great victories and dreadful defeats, but increasingly you also remember who was there with you.
So I wondered whether I could choose one person from each decade who, for me, represented Newcastle United at that time. Not necessarily the best player, the greatest manager or the worst owner, simply somebody who captured something about how that particular period felt.
I settled on a pattern of hero then villain.
1960s, Joe Harvey, Hero
Joe Harvey represented something Newcastle have spent much of the following half century trying to rediscover, a man who understood the club, carried authority naturally and delivered success.
He had already captained Newcastle to two FA Cups before managing the side that won the Inter Cities Fairs Cup in 1969.
I was still a boy, but my first decade supporting Newcastle ended with us winning a European trophy. At the time I doubt any of us imagined quite how precious that achievement would become.
We probably assumed there would be more. There was not.
This will probably be my most controversial choice because Gordon Lee was by no means a bad Newcastle manager. He took us to fifth place and a League Cup Final.
But the 1970s, for me, meant Malcolm Macdonald.
Supermac had everything a young supporter could want, goals, power, swagger and personality. He was one of those rare footballers who seemed to become part of the identity of the club itself.
Lee did not believe in stars and his relationship with Macdonald deteriorated. In 1976 Supermac was sold to Arsenal.
Whatever the football logic behind that decision, it felt completely wrong.
Perhaps it was one of my earliest lessons in supporting Newcastle United. Managers and players come and go, but supporters remain and have to live with what follows.
1980s, Kevin Keegan, Hero
Then Kevin Keegan arrived.
It is difficult to explain now what his signing in 1982 meant. Newcastle were in the Second Division and Keegan had twice been European Footballer of the Year. He had played for Liverpool, Hamburg and England. Players like Kevin Keegan were simply not supposed to sign for Newcastle United at that point in our history.
But he did.
I was there for his debut against Queens Park Rangers. Newcastle won 1 0 and Keegan scored.
More than forty years later I can still see it, although perhaps I can feel it more clearly than I can see it.
I have always sworn that the Gallowgate sucked that ball into the net. The noise built, thousands of people seemed to will exactly the same thing to happen and somehow it did.
Keegan changed the mood of Newcastle United almost overnight. He made the club feel important again and, perhaps more importantly, he made us believe.
None of us knew then that he would return as manager a decade later and transform the club all over again.
With Kevin, the extraordinary always seemed possible.
Phot by Jamie Smith via The Mag
1990s, Ruud Gullit, Villain
Choosing a villain from the 1990s feels slightly perverse because the decade contained some of the most wonderful football I have ever watched.
Keegan returned, Newcastle reached the Premier League, Andy Cole scored goals for fun, Ginola and Ferdinand arrived and finally Alan Shearer came home.
Then came that extraordinary Sunday in October 1996.
Newcastle United 5 Manchester United 0.
I was there and I took my mother.
This was Ferguson’s Manchester United, the champions, containing Cantona, Beckham and Schmeichel, the team which had inflicted so much pain on us only months earlier.
Newcastle dismantled them.
Peacock scored, Ginola produced that wonderful finish, Ferdinand made it three, Shearer scored the fourth and Philippe Albert completed the afternoon by chipping Peter Schmeichel.
I remember looking around St James’ Park and genuinely struggling to believe what I was witnessing.
There have been more important Newcastle victories, particularly Wembley in 2025, but for sheer exhilaration I am not sure I have experienced anything quite like that 5 0.
What makes the memory even more valuable now is that I shared it with my mother.
Three years later came a very different memory.
Newcastle against Sunderland in August 1999.
I was there with my father, who is sadly no longer with us.
The rain was torrential and the ground was being redeveloped, with part of the Milburn Stand uncovered. We were absolutely soaked. Then the team was announced. No Alan Shearer and no Duncan Ferguson.
The reaction around the ground was extraordinary. This was Sunderland at home and Gullit had left Shearer on the bench.
Newcastle went ahead through Kieron Dyer, but Niall Quinn equalised and Kevin Phillips scored the winner.
We lost 2 1 and Gullit resigned three days later.
I remember the defeat, but what has stayed with me more vividly is my father beside me, the relentless rain, the unfinished ground and the uproar when the team was announced.
That night seemed to capture why Gullit never truly fitted Newcastle United. His reputation was enormous, but reputation is not enough if you fail to understand the club you have inherited.
2000s, Alan Shearer, Hero
Alan Shearer requires very little explanation.
Two hundred and six Newcastle goals, our record goalscorer and still the Premier League’s all time leading scorer.
The statistics are extraordinary, but they are not quite why I chose him.
Issue 108 – February 1998
Shearer could have gone elsewhere and won more. Manchester United wanted him and everybody knew what that move might have brought.
He chose Newcastle.
Then he stayed through changing managers, injuries, boardroom upheaval and the apparently endless capacity of Newcastle United to create chaos around itself.
He did not bring us the trophy we desperately wanted, but when success did not arrive he remained.
For Newcastle supporters, that mattered enormously.
2010s, Mike Ashley, Villain
Mike Ashley bought Newcastle in 2007 and sold the club in 2021.
Those fourteen years included two relegations, Kevin Keegan’s departure, Chris Hughton’s dismissal after bringing us back from the Championship and the renaming of St James’ Park as Sports Direct Arena.
There were good moments and it would be unfair to pretend otherwise. Newcastle finished fifth under Alan Pardew and Rafa Benitez restored a sense of dignity and purpose.
But the problem with the Ashley years went beyond individual results.
For long periods it felt as though ambition itself had become an inconvenience.
Newcastle United had spent decades failing to fulfil enormous expectations. Under Ashley it sometimes seemed that having those expectations was considered the problem.
For a club built upon hope, that was the hardest part to accept.
2020s, Eddie Howe, Hero
Then came Wembley.
16 March 2025.
Newcastle United 2 Liverpool 1.
Dan Burn and Alexander Isak.
After seventy years, Newcastle United had won a major domestic trophy.
I was there with my son Thomas.
That changed the meaning of the afternoon for me.
I thought about when I began supporting the club, about Keegan’s debut, about my mother beside me for the 5 0 against Manchester United and about standing with my father in the rain on that miserable Sunderland night.
Now I was at Wembley with my own son watching Newcastle United finally win something.
When the final whistle went I looked at Thomas and sixty years of supporting Newcastle seemed, for a moment, to come together.
Of course the trophy mattered. After waiting that long it mattered enormously.
But the person standing beside me mattered even more.
That afternoon became about something beyond football.
It became about inheritance.
Sixty Years On
So there they are.
Joe Harvey, Gordon Lee, Kevin Keegan, Ruud Gullit, Alan Shearer, Mike Ashley and Eddie Howe.
Seven decades, alternating heroes and villains, although after sixty years you understand that neither football nor life fits quite so neatly into categories.
What stays with me now is not simply what happened, but who shared it with me.
My mother was beside me when Newcastle dismantled Manchester United 5 0.
My father was beside me in the torrential rain against Sunderland.
I was there when Kevin Keegan scored on his debut.
And Thomas was beside me at Wembley when the waiting finally ended.
I started supporting Newcastle United the day I was born! More than sixty years later I stood beside my son and watched the club lift a trophy.
Somewhere between those two moments lies most of my life.
Perhaps that is what you eventually understand about supporting a football club for this long.
You think you are collecting matches, goals and results.
In the end, you are collecting memories of people.
Owners sell, managers leave, players retire and stadiums change, but those memories remain.
My parents are part of my Newcastle United story. Now my son is part of it too.
We talk about passing support for a football club from one generation to another, but perhaps what we are really passing on are pieces of ourselves.
That is the part of Newcastle United nobody ever owns.
And nobody ever will.