Back to black on Tyneside.

[Tom 13921]

There is a school of thought, articulated yesterday by Martin O’Neill, that “the Premiership will be poorer without Newcastle United” – but as they surrendered without a fight, it was worth asking: “Poorer how?” For the majority of us, cynicism overtook sympathy months, perhaps years, ago and was summed up by the banner draped from the top tier at the Holte End yesterday. “Who’s your next Messiah,” it read. “Ant or Dec?” The moment when Newcastle stopped being people’s second club is impossible to pin down. Perhaps there are simply too many of them.

 

But what is undeniable is that they were sent off into the Coca-Cola Championship yesterday with no great outpouring of emotion. “We’ll meet again,” chimed around Villa Park. There was mockery, as well as Dame Vera Lynn, in the air.

 

By yesterday, Newcastle had become a caricature – a cliché made up of shocking mismanagement, overpaid players and bare-chested supporters still cheering them all the way to relegation. All the while, praying for a Messiah-inspired miracle that was never going to happen.

 

Loyalty from the supporters is about the only reliable thing on Tyneside these days, but even that is now associated with the blind loyalty of the lemming. “Follow me,” a North East legend cries and off they trot, straight over the cliff.

 

It is a great sporting institution and will be again one day. There will probably be a full house when Shearer tries to lead them back in the first Championship game of next season.

 

Shearer has conducted himself with dignity over the past eight games, despite a record of five points from 24 demonstrating how little he could do to stop the slide. The fans had been “badly let down”, he said, and never more so than yesterday.

 

But if the fans have been victim to perhaps the worst mismanagement outside Leeds United in recent years, they might also care to wonder whether they, like Othello, “loved not wisely, but too well”.

 

If they were not so hung up on the idea of Geordie saviours, perhaps Mike Ashley would not have tried to strike a populist chord with the ludicrously misguided appointment of Kevin Keegan last season. Perhaps the fans would not have demanded the sacking of Sam Allardyce for the supposed crime of failing to play football like Barcelona or Brazil, if they could have their time again.

 

Yesterday they pinned their hopes on a team put together by half-a-dozen managers, a couple of owners, at least one executive director (football) and a vice-president (player recruitment), aka Tony Jimenez.

 

They were relying on a squad in which 15 players were said by the BBC to be on more than £50,000 a week – with no clauses for a reduction if they ended up in the Championship. It is a wage bill estimated to be the fifth highest in the top flight.

 

“There are millions of questions to be answered,” Shearer said yesterday, all of which come under the banner of “how on earth do we get out of this financial mess?” Given the extent of the problems, it is remarkable that Shearer appears so willing to take on the manager’s job into next season.

 

“I have enjoyed the challenge,” he said. “I have only had one game where the feeling was magnificent but I can understand why people say it’s an addictive job, I really can.”

 

Shearer will meet Ashley in the next couple of days, when the owner will surely cave in to any reasonable demands for autonomy. The former Newcastle striker has no managerial experience beyond the bruises of the past eight matches – and was an appointment born out of desperation – but he seems the club’s best hope simply because he has weight to throw around.

 

As he acknowledged yesterday, huge changes in manpower are required because yesterday it seemed as though too many players simply did not care, knowing that they will jump from a sinking ship.

 

However, it must also be acknowledged that a crisis of this magnitude takes years to manufacture. The moment when it started for most of us was when Freddy Shepherd sacked Bobby Robson on August 30, 2004, a month into a season, after a fifth-place finish, and replaced him with Graeme Souness.

 

The subsequent mismanagement can be measured in all sorts of ways, not least the lack of class or dignity. It was Shepherd, you will recall, who called female fans “dogs” while “on the lash” with an undercover reporter, while Ashley, the present owner, is best known for the speed at which he can down a pint of lager.

 

He carries the responsibility for three managers at present – Keegan who is suing the club for wrongful dismissal, Joe Kinnear, who was offered a long contract shortly before his heart attack, and now Shearer, who will expect to be offered the job on his own terms i n the next few days.

 

Whether Newcastle can return as a top-flight force as long as Ashley is in charge is a whole question in itself, given the many spectacular mistakes he has made.

 

If there is Shearer, there is hope will be the view of the supporters but not even the great icon of the North East could summons a performance out of this rag-tag bunch of players at Villa Park.

 

It would have to be an own goal that sent them down. Like just about everything else that has gone wrong at Newcastle in the past five years, the final ruination would be self-in-flicted. To cap it all, there was a dismissal for David Edgar, who sprinted off the pitch so fast after his second yellow card that he might have been appearing in an episode of “I’m a Newcastle United player, get me out of here”.

 

The rest of the players were not far behind him, scarcely able to get off the pitch fast enough. For most of them, Newcastle’s plight was someone else’s problem, as of yesterday.

 

Newcastle’s drop was end of a rollercoaster

 

Words by Bill Edgar

 

Defeat away to Aston Villa ended Newcastle United’s 16-year stint in the Premier League yesterday, but it was another loss at Villa Park – Sir Bobby Robson’s last match before his dismissal in 2004 – that arguably ended widespread affection for the club.

 

- Kevin Keegan’s appointment as Newcastle manager in February 1992 catches the imagination, generating affection for the club around the country as he saves them from relegation to the third tier and then inspires a goal-filled promotion campaign in his first full season.

 

- Newcastle outscore Manchester United in finishing third in their first season back among the elite. They then draw nationwide sympathy as they build a 12-point lead over Manchester United late in the 1995-96 season, thrillingly brushing aside allcomers using two wingers, only to fall apart, notably in a 4-3 defeat by Liverpool at Anfield.

 

- Keegan steps aside the next January and Newcastle lose their way under Kenny Dalglish and Ruud Gullit, but the arrival of Bobby Robson as manager in September 1999 restores goodwill. Robson is revered around the country as the man who took England to within a penalty shoot-out of the 1990 World Cup final.

 

- The genial Robson takes Newcastle to the Champions League second group stage in 2002-03 and the Uefa Cup semi-finals a year later while steering them to three successive top-five finishes in the Premier League. But he is sacked after four games of the 2004-05 season.

 

- Graeme Souness is an unpopular choice among Newcastle fans as Robson’s replacement and they fall down the table. Glenn Roeder follows but cannot stop the rot. Sam Allardyce is appointed but is dismissed by Mike Ashley, the new owner, after half a season.

 

- Allardyce’s replacement by Keegan lasts only eight months as he cites interference in his transfer deals.

 

- Joe Kinnear arrives but is sidelined by ill health and Alan Shearer steps in with eight games of this season left. By now the Geordie Messiah idea is wearing thin and a feeling persists that, with relegation yesterday, Newcastle got what they deserved. Next season, they will be facing Scunthorpe United.

 

I fear we are going to be saturated in ignorant and shite articles written by smug journalists perpetuating myths and then criticising them.

 

Blame the fans!

[themags 0]

more utter shite and these fuckers get paid to write this crap

[Snake 0]

http://www.birminghammail.net/birmingham-s...97319-23710937/

 

Another bitter, clueless cunt telling us we're not a big club

[themags 0]

remember we're not a big club, but everyone has an opinion on us and boy do they need to tell us

[Snake 0]

remember we're not a big club, but everyone has an opinion on us and boy do they need to tell us

 

I wonder if a single one of them ever even slightly realises the irony

[Tom 13921]

The thing that gets me is the fact they rely on clichés - they criticise us for them - however they don't come from the true fans. I have personally never heard anyone say Alan Shearer is the ''messiah'' and I never heard anybody say we should sack Allardyce and bring Keegan back. Yet here we are - it's our fault.

 

Journalists saying we wont be missed are simply deceiving themselves. A Premier League full of clubs like Birmingham,Wolves, Burnley, Hull, Stoke, Wigan, Blackburn and Portsmouth may seem appealing to them but they will notice a difference when these away days at shit hole ground with small crowds grow tiresome.

 

I can't believe some journalists still harbour bitterness over the support of the club.

[Guest alex]

Without even reading that it seems a few people are pissed off at the way our supporters behaved, i.e. they weren't bleating to a man for the cameras.

[Tom 13921]

The supporters sounded class yesterday and did the themselves proud.

[Asprilla 96]

I'd be happy if these "articles" didn't get posted tbh. I'm bored of ignoring them.

[Happy Face 29]

Boro were in Uefa cup final 3 years back. We've not managed that in 40 years.

 

Why don't they get these articles? [Rhetorical]