7 Premier League Stars That Newcastle Allowed To Slip Away
2. Sami Hyypia
Although synonymous with Liverpool after a prosperous decade at Anfield it's easy to forget that Hyypia could so easily have become a Newcastle player back in the mid-nineties. The little-known Finnish centre back, 22 at the time, turned up on Tyneside in 1995 and was swiftly accepted on a two-week trial by Kevin Keegan as our then manager sought fresh defensive reinforcements to supplement his first team options. However, for reasons unknown, a reticent Keegan wasn't enamoured by Hyypia and sent him back to home to Veikkausliiga club MyPa without hesitation. Newcastle certainly helped my career, he later said. I had a two-week trial in 1995 under Kevin Keegan and it gave me an insight into English football. It turned out to be a huge oversight on Keegan's part and little did we know that we had provided an unlikely launchpad for one of the greatest defenders of the Premier League era. Four years after his Magpies rejection Hyypia, still a relative stranger to English football anoraks, landed on Merseyside where he would go on to captain the Reds and establish himself as a club legend across 10 successful seasons at Anfield. Meanwhile, the Magpies would purchase 17 central defenders to varying degrees of success during that same timeframe as we became renowned for our porous rearguard.
