Kevin Keegan admits English football might have changed forever had his Newcastle side pipped Manchester United to the league title in 1996.

It is one of the enduring regrets of Keegan's first spell in charge at St James' Park that the Magpies' lead at the top of the table was gradually eroded by Sir Alex Ferguson's chasers as a first championship since 1927 slipped from the club's grasp.

Twelve years on, the two sides meet again on Tyneside tonight with Newcastle still awaiting the piece of silverware which has deserted them since the 1969 Fairs Cup final and United having gone from strength to strength.

But while the small gap between the clubs then has widened into a chasm now, Keegan firmly believes the domestic game might have been blown apart by his so-called 'Entertainers' if they could have hung on to their lead.

He said: "It remains the regret of all football when you talk to people. They don't have to be Newcastle fans.

"It's everybody other than the Manchester United fans - and there are quite a lot of them - who come to you and say, 'if only your team had won the league that year, you would have changed the thinking of football'.

"And I think we would have done. The belief that you could not play that way and win anything, we almost bucked the trend.

"But in the end, because we didn't, people were still able to say, 'look, we told you you couldn't win playing that way'."

Keegan added: "Yes, it was disappointing at the end of the day, but the pluses far out-weighed the minuses.

"But we didn't have any silverware to show for it, and this club needed something like that so people didn't keep saying it's 50 years, 60 years since we won anything.

"We were not able to put that to bed, but we made a lot of friends and we played a brand of football that, strangely enough, teams like Arsenal and Manchester United are playing now."

Keegan's side welcome the reigning champions tonight having not won in the league since December 15, a run of nine games which has seen them slip towards the fight for top-flight survival.

They do so still smarting from the 6-0 trouncing they received at Old Trafford last month before the new manager's appointment.

However, having guided the Magpies to a famous 5-0 win over Ferguson's men in October 1996 and twice marshalled Manchester City to derby victory, Keegan is hoping to extend his record in the most unlikely of circumstances.

He said: "I don't know how Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho have fared against Alex - I don't check records - but I can think of at least three, maybe four times when we have beaten them with teams.

"It is not easy to beat Manchester United ever, and a 5-0, and a 4-1 and a 3-1 with Manchester City, I remember.

"But this is a different time, a different era. We are probably different people to the guys we were 12 years ago when we were after the title."

More news from SportingLife.com