As City and football fans everywhere mourn the loss of Kevin Keegan, who died yesterday at the age of 75 following a battle with cancer, I thought is nice to remember one of his great days in the Man City dugout.
While the great man was best remembered for his playing days at Liverpool and Hamburg, and for two spells in the Newcastle dugout, he spent the best part of four years as City manager between 2001 and 2005 — three full seasons and into a fourth, taking the club from Division One back into the Premier League and giving supporters some of the most memorable nights of that era.
There’s no better way to remember him than through one of them.
If one match captured everything Kevin Keegan was about as a manager, it was this:
On 4 February 2004, his City side trailed Tottenham 3-0 at half-time, down to ten men, in an FA Cup fourth-round replay at White Hart Lane. What followed has gone down as one of the greatest comebacks the competition has ever seen.
City had already needed a replay after a 1-1 draw at the City of Manchester Stadium, Nicolas Anelka’s opener cancelled out by Gary Doherty.
At White Hart Lane, things fell apart almost immediately. Ledley King curled Spurs ahead inside two minutes, Robbie Keane doubled the lead before the half-hour, and Christian Ziege added a third with a 25-yard free-kick.
City, deprived of first-choice goalkeeper David James, who was cup-tied, and starting Icelandic debutant Árni Gautar Arason instead, then lost Joey Barton to a red card right before the break. Three goals down, a man light, away from home — it should have been over.
It wasn’t.
A comeback for the ages…
City stormed back in the second half.
A Sylvain Distain header from a set-piece on 48 minutes started the ball rolling, and was followed by Paul Bosvelt’s deflected volley, making it 3-2.
White Hart Lane started to wilt, and with ten minutes remaining, Shaun Wright-Phillips evaded the Spurs offside trap and lobbed Kasey Keller to make it 3-3.
The comeback was complete in stoppage time when Jon Macken, on as a sub for the injured Nicolas Anelka, rose to head home Michael Tarnat’s cross.
City won 4-3, and White Hart Lane fell into a stunned silence. It sent Keegan’s side through to face Manchester United at Old Trafford in the next round, where they sadly lost 4-2.
But it was a memory. One that has endured.
“It was the Cup tie of my lifetime,” Keegan said afterwards — a line that spoke for everyone inside the ground that night.
It was a result that defined his time at Maine Road and the City of Manchester Stadium: unpredictable, occasionally chaotic, but built on a refusal to ever accept a game was beyond saving.
City fans who were there still talk about it as one of the great nights in the club’s pre-Abu Dhabi history, and it remains a fitting way to remember a manager who was much loved and will be much missed.
RIP.
