THE GREAT MAN U MASSACRE – WISEY COPS A HAPPY SLAP, BUT MASSIMO HAS A MARE

DATE: 3 October 1999

OCCASION: Premier League match

SIGNIFICANCE: Fergie’s Reds travelled to the Bridge on a 29-game unbeaten run, but after just 27 seconds a suicidal charge from goalie Massimo Taibi gifted Gus Poyet an opener into an unguarded net. Then Chris Sutton made it two with his first goal in Chelsea colours…

SCORE: Chelsea 5-0 Manchester United

SCORERS: Poyet 1, Sutton 16, Poyet 55, Berg (og) 59, Morris 82

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT: Nicky Butt was red-carded for kicking out at Dennis Wise after this pathetic incidence of handbags – though who could have blamed him? And so things went from embarrassingly crap, via amateurish petulance, to a fifth and final goal through the hapless Taibi’s legs… all en route to yet another United title!

LINE-UPS: Chelsea: De Goey, Ferrer, Hogh, Lebouef, Babayaro, Petrescu (Le Saux 77), Deschamps, Wise (Morris 65), Poyet, Zola (Flo 69), Sutton. Manchester United: Taibi, Irwin, Berg, Stam, Silvestre, P. Neville, Beckham (Wilson 65), Scholes (Sheringham 65), Butt; Yorke, Cole (Solskjaer 65).

VENUE: Stamford Bridge

ATTENDANCE: 34, 909

4 October 1999

BBC 1’s Walking with Dinosaurs provides our first computer-generated, animatronic glimpse of life in the Mesozoic Era.

5 October 1999

Thirty-one people die in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash.

8 October 1999

A leaked International Olympic Committee report names bobsleigh, weightlifting and baseball as the sports that produce the most drug cheats.