10 Best Free Signings Ever Made By Newcastle United

5. John Barnes

Only to Dalglish did it make sense to sell Les Ferdinand and replace him with a 33-year-old John Barnes who was in such atrocious shape that his age seemed to correspond with the weight he was carrying beneath his new Black and White shirt.

Accompanied by fellow veterans Ian Rush and Stuart Pearce to St James' Park - dubbed as Dalglish's 'Dad's Army' - Barnes featured more regularly than first anticipated due to a long-term injury suffered by Alan Shearer before the season had even kicked off and the series of poor performances from a young John Dahl Tomasson. Asprilla and Barnes was a depressing downgrade on the Shearer-Ferdinand axis that plundered over 50 goals between them the year before.

But in fairness to the former England international he was a rare bright spot in a dreadful campaign under the stewardship of Dalglish and ended up as our leading scorer in the Premier League with six goals, also finding the net in the group stage of our ill-fated Champions League sojourn. Not bad for a cumbersome veteran with limited mobility playing in a stolid team for a manager whose idea of attacking play is a five-yard lateral pass. Not bad at all.