Alan Shearer and the Newcastle United years – 2000/2001 | OneFootball

The 2000-01 season was one which promised much for Newcastle United and Alan Shearer but ultimately delivered very little.

With the club still on a high from the remarkable turnaround inspired by the management of Bobby Robson and Alan Shearer now focusing fully on club duties having retired from the international game, it was hoped that a return to challenging at the top end of the table could be on the cards.

Newcastle were relatively conservative in the transfer market that summer, with Robson choosing to ship out a number of bigger names including players such as Duncan Ferguson, Alessandro Pistone, Silvio Maric, Temur Ketsbaia, Steve Howey, Didier Domi and Alain Goma.

Transfer acquisitions were focused on young talent with the summer’s big signing that of Wimbledon’s promising young centre forward Carl Cort. He was followed through the door by Christian Bassedas, Daniel Cordone, Olivier Bernard, Lomano Lua Lua, Clarence Acuna, Wayne Quinn and Andy O’Brien.

After predictably losing to Manchester United at Old Trafford on the opening day, the season got off to a promising start with Newcastle picking up three wins in a row, Shearer getting off the mark with a penalty in a 2-0 victory at Coventry City.

However, he would then go five games without finding the back of the net as Robson’s side stuttered in the league. Alan Shearer though would find his scoring touch once more, scoring a crucial winner in a 1-0 victory away at Manchester City and then adding another in a 3-1 win at Middlesbrough.

This would be followed by back-to-back to doubles against Bradford City in a 4-3 thriller at St James’ Park and a crucial 2-1 win against Ipswich Town in the Premier League.in early November.

Unknown to everyone at the time, they would be the last goals Alan Shearer would score that season.

By now he was really struggling to manage a troublesome knee ligament injury, complicated by tendinitis, and he would play just eight more games that season, without scoring, with his final appearance coming in early March. He had played through the pain barrier, having three cortisone injections in seven months to try and manage the problem.

Alan Shearer was one of the first football players to go under the knife with Dr Richard Steadman, who would go on to become the go-to surgeon for difficult knee injuries in the years that followed.

Shearer would go on record as saying that Steadman ‘saved his career’.

Despite missing so much of the season, Shearer finished as the club’s top scorer with seven goals in 23 appearances. The lack of anyone filling the void left by his absence was at the heart of the team’s struggles that season. Nobby Solano and Carl Cort also both finished on seven goals.

The loss of Cort was a heartbreaking one. He had shown enormous promise in the early stages of his Newcastle career, scoring his seven goals in just 15 appearances, but would also succumb to a knee injury, which would see him visit Steadman on the personal recommendation of Shearer.

Had Cort been able to stay fit he might have gone some way to filling the void left by Newcastle’s number nine.

Newcastle would ultimately finish in 11th place once more, but there were to be no Cup runs, exiting the FA Cup in the third round and the League Cup in the fourth.

Ultimately, Shearer’s fifth season at the club was a forgettable one, but after going under the knife it was hoped that he would be back, fit and firing, in time for the start of the next season.