10 Best Free Signings Ever Made By Newcastle United

6. Temuri Ketsbaia

Previous club: AEK Athens Signed for NUFC in: 1997

It is often glossed over that Ketsbaia - a free transfer from AEK Athens - is the man whose goal against Dinamo Zagreb delivered Champions League football to Newcastle for the first time. Without the unpredictable cueball Georgian on that barmy night in Zagreb we would never have rubbed shoulders with Europe’s elite club sides nor had the memory of our famous victory over the mighty Barcelona at St James’ Park to savour.

But it is a single isolated incident for which every Toon fan remembers Ketsbaia endures as the lasting impression of an unfailingly inconsistent three-year spell on Tyneside.

Obviously we’re referring to his wild celebration in the aftermath of scoring a stoppage time winner against Bolton. Dispatching his crowd to the shirt, an untamed Ketsbaia proceeded to kick lumps out of the advertising hoardings all the while trying in vain to pull the rest of his kit off in front of a disbelieving Gallowgate crowd.

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Content writer, blogger, occasional journalist and lifetime inhabitant of the post-LOST island of grief.