Toon fans just want some hope

Dec 30 2007 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

WHAT is it about the Newcastle United manager’s job that seemingly sends sane men a bit mad?

It appears Sam Allardyce may be the latest to lose rhyme and reason in seeking to solve the riddle of 39 trophy-less years on Tyneside.

Well, so it appears to certain people who watch the Magpies for kicks or for a living.

Outsiders? They’d have us believe no manager could bear the aforementioned statistical monkey on his back and the burden of supporters whose expectations are absurdly unrealistic.

Take The Times, which chose a brave moment indeed – the aftermath of Boxing Day’s debacle at Wigan – to blame United’s plight on their fans.

“The Newcastle supporters are notoriously difficult to please,” wrote the paper’s occasional Magpie twitcher.

“Their baseless belief that the club ought to be mixing it with the likes of Manchester United and Arsenal at the top of the Premier League hardly helps Allardyce and his many recent predecessors, nor does the demand for the champagne football that Kevin Keegan once brought to St James’s Park.”

But then, few outsiders have ever really understood Newcastle United.

How can people who pick their football club like they would a settee pass judgement on those who had it chosen for them at birth?

Unrealistic expectations? Supporters up here may crave success, but one thing they have learned over so many years is not to expect it.

The demand for champagne football? Plain lazy mythology – what Tyneside wants is a winning team, whatever it takes – that falls flatter than ever after another irredeemable display in defeat.

Perhaps these misconceptions lie in the fact that the Magpies’ mob mouth off during games, while fans further south simply vote with their feet.

Yet it’s because St James’s Park remains all but full that Allardyce was attracted to Newcastle.

He wanted a big job at a big club, and it’s the supporters – and the supporters alone – who make Newcastle a big club.

So it’s a bit rich to accuse them of demanding too much of him in return.

But I digress.

For what those supporters do demand is for their team to at least try to play to its strengths, and with some semblance of shape and spirit.

Remind anyone – in any way – of Newcastle’s display at Wigan? Some hope.

No, part of the reason why Allardyce, despite fans’ appreciation of the potential value of continuity at a club with an ever-revolving door, is in such peril is because that performance, as with others previous, was all too familiar.

The now-traditional no-show at the JJB could have been plucked straight from the Graeme Souness scrapbook . . .

Players out of position, out of ideas and, apparently, all out of motivation.

At Bolton, a club he more or less re-invented, Allardyce’s tactics were simple (despite what he would have had us believe) and extremely sound.

At Newcastle, his methods (for, as he is quick to remind us, they are many) make increasingly little sense.

Alan Smith as centre-forward one week, supplementary centre-half the next. A left winger at left-back while a £6 million left-back (Allardyce’s biggest summer signing) sits on the bench. A right winger played wide left. Three central midfield spoilers played together.

And, all the while, players being dropped and recalled at dizzying pace.

If Rafa Benitez is Mr Tinkerman, Big Sam is becoming Mr Meddle. Or Mr Muddle.

But as well as obvious doubts over his future, that raises a wider question of why managing Newcastle prompts previously strong, straightforward men to turn, well, weird.

It’s too easy to blame pressure. That exists elsewhere.

My theory? It’s that at a club synonymous (having won nowt as a team) with “big” individuals – the Macdonalds, the Keegans, the Beardsleys et Big Al – and an opinionated crowd, an incoming manager strives that bit harder – consciously or otherwise – to assert his authority.

If Allardyce’s recent tactics and selection policy say anything, it is surely: “I’m in charge.”

But in charge of what, and for how long?

Allardyce talks long and loud about the need for continuity in the dug-out, yet forsakes it on the field.

Why expect fans not to panic when his ever-changing teamsheet screams the word?

Yes, he has been unfortunate with injuries. But let’s not forget, they are injuries HE claimed would soon be a thing of the past.

And while it’s all very well talking about three-year or five-year plans – as I say, no Newcastle fan wants to go through a manager a year – patience is a hard ask when it is difficult to discern any plan whatsoever in the here and now.

“Notoriously difficult to please”? How does that equate with 50,000 turning up once a fortnight to watch almost unrelenting dross these last three years?

“Champagne football”? No, those 50,000 neither demand that nor live in the “baseless belief” that Newcastle should be at the top of the league.

All they ask for is hope; the currency they have traded in for half-a-century or more.

And hope, much like an explanation of Allardyce’s thought processes, seems very distant right now.