Tom Lappin: Short, sharp shock of relegation may be the best remedy for Newcastle's multiple long-term maladies

Published on Friday 22 May 2009 22:27

AT LEAST the urban aesthetes can take some satisfaction in tomorrow's Premier League relegation dramas. It's possible that the two ugliest towns in England, Hull and Middlesbrough, will watch their teams go down, with another blighted wasteland, Sunderland, waiting in the wings.

It's a surreal beauty contest where Newcastle emerges victorious, but perhaps that fits in with the bizarre Geordie sense of entitlement that has refused to contemplate the possibility of the side dropping out of the top division.

Failure to achieve a result against Aston Villa superior to Hull's against Manchester United Reserves though, and Newcastle will be cast out of the money-spinning firmament into the scrappy chaos of the Championship.

Players, owner, fans and manager alike seem incapable of fully comprehending their predicament. In truth though, the club has been in a steady descent since the heady glory of that 1-1 draw with Manchester United at Old Trafford in their first league game of the season. Alan Shearer's rescue attempt now seems as sensible as a man trying to catch a grand piano dropping from a sixth-floor landing.

You could waste a lot of precious time trying to gauge the thought processes of Shearer.

A pie-chart of his cerebral activity would probably uncover substantial slices devoted to creosote, McDonalds milk-shakes and Alan Hansen's repertoire of derisory snorts.

A few weeks back the gears probably cranked through Newcastle United's fixture list and came up with the conclusion that their immediate rivals were so hopeless that beating Fulham and Middlesbrough would probably be enough to ensure Premier League salvation.

The calculation was not inaccurate. But the belief that this Newcastle team could beat Fulham was. And markedly so.

In empirical terms Newcastle's side isn't good enough to stay in the Premier League. Their acquisitions in recent years have been misguided, insane, or perennially unfit. Joey Barton must have pictures of Sam Allardyce in a compromising position (doesn't bear thinking about) given the large one's continued inclination to sign him, but his every contribution to Newcastle's cause has been negative.

At the other end of the personal probity scale, Michael Owen's Tyneside sojourn has been such that last rites are already being read over the career of the greatest England goalscorer of his generation and a former European footballer of the year.

Attributing the blame for Newcastle United's demise is a party game for all the family. The present owner Mike Ashley is a popular and logical choice, tempered by a certain sympathy for the state the club was left in by the previous administration.

By Ashley's own reckoning he has spent 244 million buying the club and settling its debts. He would be hard-pressed to sell a Premier League club for that sum. A lower-league side would be substantially tougher to market.

Ashley has the unhappy knack of lurching between appointments who are unpalatable to the fans, or too hallowed. Freddie Shepherd bequeathed him Sam Allardyce who was a bad match for a club with the romantically unrealistic ideals of Newcastle. The memory of the club's purple patch of exhilarating attacking football in the mid-90s was too recent for fans to tolerate a cautious pragmatist like Allardyce. The irony is that, if Allardyce had never arrived in 2007, he would have been the ideal caretaker to steer the team to safety in 2009, rather than the callow Shearer.

With such material in the boardroom, it seems almost an afterthought to blame the players. What Shearer discovered in his first weeks though was a thoroughly unprofessional attitude on the part of many of the first-team squad, a lack of discipline, a habit of mutual recrimination, and a broad lack of motivation.

This shouldn't occur at a club with such experienced professionals as Owen, Kevin Nolan, Alan Smith, Geremi, Damien Duff and Nicky Butt. But lack of leadership had created a culture of contempt.

It is to Shearer's credit that he confronted this head-on, even if the immediate results were counter-productive. It will take more than a few weeks to root out that corruption. One vaguely promising symptom is that Shearer has managed to rouse the habitually truculent Mark Viduka from his slumbers and convince him to actually go out on the field and work for his considerable pay-packet.

If that mental pie-chart of his has any depths though, Shearer might have to acknowledge that the best cure for Newcastle's multiple maladies would be the rough shock of relegation.

The reduced status would prick the ludicrous bubble of esteem that fans and staff have bestowed on a club whose last league title came 82 years ago. Realising that they are a Championship club with potential might allow Shearer (or his successor, possibly Iain Dowie) to slough off the dead flesh from the roster, and concentrate on the enthusiasm and talent of young players like Steven Taylor, Danny Guthrie and Andy Carroll, none of them anywhere near world-beaters, but at least still enthused about playing for the club.

Newcastle fans should remember that the hallowed Kevin Keegan era began in 1992 with the club languishing in the lower reaches of the old Division Two. Desperate straits gave Keegan the freedom to impose his own ideals. Shearer might also appreciate that it is easier to rebuild a club's team-spirit, discipline and verve outside the remorseless Premier League spotlight.

Ashley's accountant, the Geordie nation and Shearer will all be praying for the miracle of survival tomorrow. Those who take a longer view might realise that failure could be the best option on this occasion.