Will the fate of clubs give Viduka deja vu feeling?

May 17 2009 by Neil Farrington, Sunday Sun

IF Newcastle and Sunderland escape relegation, and even if Middlesbrough do not, what then?

Judging by the euphoria triggered by the Toon becoming the 11th consecutive team to beat Gareth Southgate’s sickly travellers, beating the drop would send sales of cigars and slippers soaring on Tyneside.

But anyone who thinks Newcastle – or Sunderland (or even, deadlines notwithstanding, Boro) – could sit back and savour survival is in need of a stronger drug than nicotine.

Think I’m going “off message” here? Just consider Leeds United.

They escaped the Championship in their final away game – at Arsenal, of all places – in 2003. Thanks largely – and, we hope, coincidentally – to one Mark Viduka.

A year later, they weren’t only down, but all but out. Stripped of star turns, befuddled by a merry-go-round of managers (sound familiar Mike?) . . .

Oh, how we’ve laughed at the woe which has befallen Leeds since.

But what hope – let alone guarantee – is there that our survivors would avoid going the same way 12 months from now?

Lest we forget, most of the POWs in The Great Escape were recaptured – and shot.

Boro, with Steve Gibson’s business suffering in the recession, will surely continue to cut their cloth according to their chairman’s circumstances, so whichever division they end up in, I am not exactly blinded by the light at the end of their tunnel.

Sunderland, as things stand under Ricky “Rabbit-in-the-headlights” Sbragia, will struggle badly to attract players capable of leavening his soporific, safety-first tactics.

And without new investment, Newcastle – with or without Alan Shearer – will struggle to fashion silk purses from sow’s ears.

Joining them, provided they remain there themselves, in next season’s Premier League are at least one club, possibly two, with recent top-flight experience and two with managers boasting the same.

OK, they’re not good experiences but won’t they – clubs and managers – be all the better for them?

And while West Brom look gone and Hull like hell, it is no longer a knocking bet to assume that all three clubs promoted from the Championship will provide as many nailed-on buffer states protecting the pre-established Premier League order from its relegation slots.

Moreover, would you wager on Stoke suffering second-season syndrome? Maybe, but not with much.

And even if the likes of Bolton and Portsmouth do not or can not look to push on in the manner of Tottenham, Fulham, West Ham and Wigan – and given some of those names, what’s stopping them? – won’t one more year of the Houdinis only embolden them further when next they face the North East’s “finest”?

If that’s not the most damning indictment of our local clubs’ current standing – survival or otherwise – I don’t know what is.