Well, it was in the 2002-03 season, and the club's Premier League status wasn't at stake.

Instead, Newcastle – captained, of course, by Alan Shearer – needed to beat Juventus, Dynamo Kiev and Feyenoord to stay in the Champions League after losing their first three group games.

Few outside Tyneside gave United side a chance, but they did it – just.

And those fans who made the trip to Feyenoord's De Kuip to see Craig Bellamy score a dramatic 90th-minute winner would not have imagined that almost six and a half years later, the club's top-flight survival would be on the line, such was the optimism at the direction in which Sir Bobby Robson was taking Newcastle.

The days when United were riding high in the Premier League, and taking on all-comers in Europe, seems a lifetime ago.

But Newcastle are where they are, and this time, rather than Europe's big guns, its Portsmouth, Middlesbrough and Fulham who stand between them and survival.

Steve Harper and Shola Ameobi were on the bench in Rotterdam that night, while Shearer was in the starting XI.

That United team wrote themselves into Champions League folklore with their remarkable reversal of fortunes, having seemingly been dead and buried after Juventus condemned them to a third successive group stage defeat at the Stadio Delle Alpi.

No other team had progressed to the second group stage after losing their first three games, and, at the time, it seemed the greatest of all great escapes.

However, it will pale into insignificance if Newcastle can cling on to their top-flight status.