It was an afternoon where some Newcastle United supporters would have even welcomed the sight of a 36-year-old Papiss Cisse playing up front. That's how wasteful the Magpies were at Vicarage Road after squandering a host of opportunities in a frustrating 1-1 draw that fittingly served as one of the final games of both the Ashley and Bruce eras.
Cisse would have loved to have been out there, himself, but the man who previously wore Newcastle's number nine shirt got to experience the next best thing as he watched on from the stands last September. Cisse was training with Watford at the time, ahead of securing a move to Turkish side Caykur Rizespor, and was invited to the game by former Newcastle team-mate Moussa Sissoko, but the striker may as well have been in the away end.
As close as Cisse is to Sissoko, who started for Watford that day, the veteran said he almost felt 'too much emotion' when he saw the Newcastle players come out of the tunnel before kick-off because he was 'so happy'. That trademark smile was even wider after Sean Longstaff fired the visitors in front.
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Newcastle ended up dropping points that day - who could forget John Anderson's fury after that Jacob Murphy miss late on? - and it would be another few months before the relegation-threatened black-and-whites even won a match. However, Cisse, who went down with Newcastle in 2016, never lost faith and that belief was strengthened following the takeover, the appointment of head coach Eddie Howe and the arrival of a handful of new signings.
"Every time I was at home sitting with my kids, I was telling my son, Ousmane, 'You know what? We're going to come back. Wait and see. We won't go down. We're black and whites. We're going to stay here,'" he recalled to ChronicleLive.
"I feel like I'm still a Newcastle player. My son sometimes tells me that. He looks at me and says, 'You still think you have a contract at Newcastle United!' I tell him it's not about the contract. I am a Newcastle fan now. It's my team. I still love Newcastle United.
"Newcastle is part of me because I had great moments and I enjoyed the time I spent there, and I respect this club and the Geordies as well. It will always be the team that I have in my heart. I never supported other clubs when I left, but Newcastle was different."
Given the bond Cisse had with Newcastle supporters - the striker even invited fans to his home on a number of occasions - that lasting affection should not come as a surprise. Yannick Bolasie, who had a brief spell at Middlesbrough last season, still asks Cisse how his Caykur Rizespor team-mate put up with the weather in the North East for so many years, but the Senegalese found warmth in how supporters 'put the fire in the players'.
Callum Wilson will know just what Cisse is talking about as a Newcastle's current number nine. Although Wilson has only played 15 games this season because of injury, Cisse has been impressed by the Magpies' top scorer, who 'gives back to the team' as a 'leader from the front'.
Chris Wood has been tasked with leading the line in Wilson's absence following his mid-season move from Burnley and the New Zealand international has popped up with precious goals against Southampton and Wolves in recent weeks. Newcastle's other January signings - Kieran Trippier, Bruno Guimaraes, Matt Targett and Dan Burn - have all played their part at various points and Cisse hopes more new arrivals will follow in the years to come.
"I want to see somebody do better than what we did and scoring crazy goals like I did against Chelsea," he said. "I want to see that because Newcastle is my team.
"You are happy if people say you are the best January signing at Newcastle United until now, but I want to see somebody better than me and, bang, bang, bang, he scores 20 goals in 14 games because he's going to take my team into a higher position.
"Maybe, because of that, we're going to go play in the Champions League one day. I want to hear that music inside St James' Park because the fans deserve it."
Cisse, of course, very nearly helped fire Newcastle into the Champions League almost a decade ago after embarking on an astonishing run of 13 goals in 14 games following his mid-season move from Freiburg. Cisse made such a remarkable start to life on Tyneside that even his team-mates and manager Alan Pardew were openly telling him he was going to score before games. It was the safest bet that punters could make.
Cisse felt like he could 'fly' from the moment he opened his account with a stunning volley on his debut against Aston Villa after being introduced to the crowd as 'your new number nine'. The stadium announcer at St James' Park was merely stating a fact - that was the shirt number Cisse was given, after all - but the new recruit felt like he had wings after he replaced the injured Leon Best.
Cisse went on to become the quickest player since Les Ferdinand to score five goals for Newcastle before briefly becoming the club's most prolific goals per-game goalscorer ahead of the great Hughie Gallacher. The final goal in that run - a ridiculous swerving strike against Chelsea - is still talked about today.
"Everywhere I go in my life, this goal follows me," he said. "This can only happen once in your lifetime. I was lucky that it happened to me. You could try doing it again until the end of your life and I don't think it would happen again.
"But what people don't know is that we had a good connection in this game because Alan Pardew didn't want to lose. It was the first time I saw him react like that.
"When I first came, Pardew was naturally quiet and spoke to you like a Dad, but he spoke with power that night. He walked in the dressing room and said: 'I don't want to lose this game. I want to take three points away from home. You guys have to do what you have to do.' We were fighting for that in our minds."
It was the high point of Cisse's four-and-a-half year spell at a club where the Senegal international made friends as much as acquaintances. Cisse is still close to Moussa Sissoko and in contact with Fabricio Coloccini, Jonas Gutierrez and Demba Ba, but there remains one former team-mate the veteran would give anything to speak to again: the late Cheick Tiote.
To say Cisse and Tiote were close would be an understatement. They were neighbours in Ponteland who would take it in turns visiting each other after training before doing it all again the next day. The pair would even arrange to meet up on holiday in Africa when they returned to Senegal and the Ivory Coast respectively to see family after a long, intense season.
Perhaps, then, it was not a surprise that the friendship continued after Tiote and Cisse left Newcastle for their new lives in China. The pair even caught up in Beijing just a few days before Tiote tragically suffered a cardiac arrest in 2017.
The news hit Cisse so hard that the striker was unable to train at Shandong Luneng for nearly two weeks. Tiote gave Cisse such an 'energy' that the 36-year-old felt he would never 'find a brother like him again'.
"I'm somebody who doesn't cry normally," he added. "I've had close friends who passed away and I didn't cry but, honestly, I can tell you I did for 10 days or even more then. I had headaches. It was so hard.
"I wanted to call him, I wanted to try and press the button, but I would think, 'What am I doing?' I would start to look at the pictures and the conversations we had. Even when I saw the pictures, I closed my eyes because I felt so bad and I felt so sorry because he was part of my life."
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