10 Former Toon Players Who Returned To Haunt Newcastle

10. Lomana Lua Lua

The 03/04 season was ultimately what cost the late, great Sir Bobby Robson his job. With only Arsenal and Chelsea having lost fewer games than the Tyneside club during the season, it was the draw column was had been the Magpies' Achilles' heel, registering a gargantuan 17. Letting leads slip on the road ultimately cost the club a Champions League berth, setting in motion a decade of underwhelming mediocrity. By the time the Congo international Lomana Lua Lua fired an 89th minute equaliser into the roof of the net to once again deprive the Toon of all three points, the Geordie faithful were well and truly sick of it. What will have irked the club even further was that Lua Lua was still a Newcastle employee when he lashed into the net at Fratton Park past a hapless Shay Given, cancelling out Craig Bellamy's first-half opener.

''I've run my sodding b***** off and then this happens! He shouldn't have played in this game. He's scored and we've lost two points. I'm sick of this!'' - Gary Speed, February 2004.

The Welshman's fury was understandable, with clubs usually stipulating that on-loan players don't feature against their parent clubs. It was an oversight on chairman Freddy Shepherd's part perhaps. With 'pandemonium' having broken out in an incensed away dressing room at Fratton Park upon the sounding of the full-time whistle, Robson was a lot more philosophical in his approach.

''It's not the fact that Lua Lua has scored that ought to be bothering us. It's the fact that Portsmouth have scored in the dying seconds - our concentration went AWOL. It hurts more because it was Lua Lua, I agree with that, but it could just as easily have been the centre-half. We turned our backs on the corner. That's what we should be upset about, not what his name is.'' - Sir Bobby Robson, February 2004.