With Newcastle losing again in the Premiership, their fans protest and manager Glenn Roeder gets the vote of confidence.
Newcastle United are a club in turmoil. No surprise there – the team from England’s north east are permanently in turmoil.
The latest chapter in a long record of ineptitude saw the Geordies slump to a 1-0 home defeat to Sheffield United on Saturday evening and end the weekend second from bottom in the Premiership – and then only on goal difference from Charlton Athletic.
The loss to the Blades comes only two days after Newcastle managed a surprise victory over Serie A high-flyers Palermo in the Uefa Cup on Thursday night.
Every other side involved in European football on the Wednesday or Thursday, played on Sunday to give themselves vital time to recover. Newcastle decided against that route so they could pick up the extra revenue from being shown live on satellite TV.
That’s a decision that backfired badly when they lost the game and around 1,000 fans stayed outside the ground to protest, chanting “sack the board”.
Fat chance of that happening. The much-unloved chairman Freddy Shepherd, has already resigned once, back in 1998. Ten months later, as a majority shareholder, he voted himself back on the board.
The chairman of the PLC, David Cassidy resigned in protest. He was replaced by…Freddy Shepherd.
It’s worth going over why Shepherd resigned the first time. He and Douglas Hall (another member of the board and son of the former chairman, Sir John Hall) had been caught in a tabloid sting, involving the now infamous “Fake Sheikh” of News of the World fame.
While thinking that the “Sheikh” was a wealthy oil billionaire willing to sink his petrodollars into Newcastle, the duo sneered at the club's supporters for spending vast sums of money on club merchandise, described the city’s females as “dogs”, and called star striker Alan Shearer the "Mary Poppins of football". All while sitting in a Spanish knocking shop.
Compounding his unpopularity, Shepherd sacked hugely popular manager Sir Bobby Robson early in the season two years ago and replaced him with martinet Graeme Souness. Who was then sacked for poor results a year later.
Souness was brought in to control what was seen as an errant dressing room full of young players more happy to sample the fabled nightlife on the city than knuckle down and get results.
This still hasn’t happened if Shepherd is to be believed – he flew back from a short break in Spain to “read the players the riot act” on Monday morning.
For the time being manager Glenn Roeder is not getting the blame from either fans or chairman but it can’t be long before serious question marks will be raised over his ability to motivate the side.
Newcastle have been unlucky with injuries – star signing Michael Owen is out for the season thanks to his ruptured anterior ligament in his right knee, replacement Obafemi Martins has a troublesome hamstring stopping him playing at the moment and Kieron Dyer is Kieron Dyer.
There’s not much respite for the Geordies either – on Tuesday they travel south to face Watford in the Carling Cup and they play the early kick off on Saturday away to Man City.
The only thing that could make things worse for the Toon Army is to be linked with Sven Goran Eriksson. Oh dear – they have.
You’d be foolish to back Newcastle to win any trophies but in terms of providing the sort of drama more often found in soap operas, you can’t get any better. As a non-Newcastle fan let me say: long may it continue.
