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Tyne and Weary

goalfood’s nick gordon brown in support of the much maligned toon army...

In the mid-90s Newcastle United, so Richard Keys kept telling us, were “everyone’s second favourite team”. Keegan’s team “have been dubbed The Entertainers”, Keys would continue, the froth clearly visible seeping out of the side of his mouth.

Do you know what? They were many people’s second favourite team...if only because they threatened to dethrone a wearyingly dominant Man United. The media may have sneered at KK’s legendary “I’d love it” rant, congratulating Fergie on his winning mind games...but for most fans, not just in Newcastle but nationwide, we loved his passion. And though the “Entertainers” tag was surely born in the Sky marketing department, it was true – they were swashbucklingly good to watch.

Little over a decade on, and Newcastle United are a laughing stock (much to the relief, no doubt, of Spurs fans). Deriding their fans has become so commonplace that it has become acceptable even in a broadsheet newspaper...Times hack Matthew Syed offers a message to “the whining, whingeing, self-pitying, self-indulgent and deluded fans on Tyneside”. Blimey, the nobs in the City must have spluttered on their Capuccinos when reading that, wondering who’d snuck a copy of a Sunderland fanzine into their copy of the (ahem) ‘Thunderer’.

Indeed, one of the reasons why I put myself forward to write this piece rather than follow the usual goalfood route of inviting a fan of the club concerned to contribute (or speaking with a fanzine / unofficial website, as when The Mag’s Mark Jensen spoke with us last year) is precisely to stop people dismissing it as another rant by the type of mythical Geordie stereoptype that the Times’ sub-editors allowed their ‘journalist’ to demonise.

That, and the fact that having been married into a family of Mags for nigh on 20 years, and having been a frequent visitor to the city since the mid-80s, I feel I can make a contribution to the debate that is objective, whilst still having some level of understanding of what it is that makes Toon fans tick.

Much of the stick that these days comes the Toon Army’s way (you know, the “deluded fans getting what they deserve” stuff) is centred round the following two arguments which are always brought up when debating “what constitutes a big club”:

Sleeping giant? Where was their so-called huge, passionate fanbase pre-Keegan’s first spell as manager?
How can they claim to be a big club when they haven’t won a trophy for 40 years?

There is a much-peddled view that Newcastle United was (is) just another slightly bigger than average club whose trophy winning CV remains filed in the ‘archived’ category. Let’s consider these points both subjectively and objectively.

Subjectively...when I started going to football regularly in the late 70s, it didn’t take me long to conclude that Newcastle and Sunderland were definitely category A when it came to passionate, noisy, loyal supporters. Nothing in the last 30 years has changed that view (ok, the wife has certainly done her best to change my view regarding Sunderland, but we’re talking Newcastle here). As a QPR supporter, I marvelled at the numbers who would do a 600 mile round trip to Loftus Road. And as the recession hit the North East big time in the early 80s just as I was old enough to have developed some political savvy, I only marvelled more.

Objectively? Well I’m not usually one for stats, but I have done some research on average attendances for this feature. Manchester United have clearly had the biggest gates on a consistent basis for several decades. Liverpool are next, their huge success in the 70s and 80s helping to compensate for the ills the city suffered in the (last) recession.

After that? Well Newcastle’s attendances are a pretty decent match for anyone else, including the likes of Villa, Everton and Tottenham, all of whom have won a few trophies in the 40 years since the Toon’s Fairs Cup triumph. Indeed lest we forget, when a breakaway League was first mooted in the early 80s, the so-called ‘Big Five’ who were fed up with the way the game’s riches were being divided through the pyramid were Man United, Liverpool, Arsenal...and Tottenham & Everton, whose inclusion ahead of the likes of Newcastle (or Villa, Man City etc) does not appear to be backed up by the stats.

We all know Chelsea have gatecrashed what is now routinely referred to as ‘the Big Four’. Their average attendances in the second half of the 20th century yo-yo’ed alarmingly, but were below 20,000 a season as recently as the early 90s, and even in what can be seen as their breakthrough year of 96/97 (Cup Winners, 6th in the Premiership) they averaged only 27,000.

Perhaps the most interesting comparison is between gates at Newcastle and Arsenal. Crowds at St James’s Park first took a sudden dip in the late 70s, and in the early 80s dropped to an average around the16-17,000 mark. You don’t need to be an economics expert to know that was about not only poor football but also mass unemployment in the region. Barring a blip in 91/92, crowds then started to rise again steadily, averaging 29,000 in the year Kevin Keegan won promotion from the second tier, then working their way up through the 30ks through the 90s – and never below 50,000 since the completion of ground redevelopment.

In the mid-80s, before George Graham had put them back on the map with two title wins, Arsenal were nowhere near filling Highbury, with averages between 25-30,000. As recently as 1993, they had an average of 24,000 – so they really do have an awful lot to thank Arsene Wenger for. What would crowds be like at the Emirates with on-field performances matching those of Newcastle?

There are also many in the media (and by extension many of their readers / viewers) who forget the relatively recent level of success Newcastle have had on the pitch despite “not winning anything”. Between 1994 and 1997, their Prem finishes were 3rd, 6th, 2nd and 2nd. There was no big 4 then (and unfortunately for the Mags limited Champions’ League spots for England), just a dominant Manchester United. Liverpool desperately tried to cling onto their coat tails, Arsenal and Chelsea still awaited Wenger and Abramovich respectively, Jack Walker could even (albeit briefly) bankroll Blackburn into being serious contenders. Newcastle had Fergie rattled (hence his even considering Keegan worthy of playing mind games with in the first place).

The 1998- 2001 post-Keegan period saw a drop to mid-table, but two FA Cup Final appearances. Then under Bobby Robson in 02-04, the finishes were 4th, 3rd, 5th....with a run to the semis of the UEFA Cup thrown in for good measure.

Many fans now see a Top 4 finish for their team as nigh on impossible. Look at the furore last season when Pompey broke the so-called Big 4’s stranglehold on the FA Cup. Well surely the above stats, allied to being one of only three Premiership clubs to consistently average over 50,000 (and how many of the others would even if their stadia allowed it?) show that Newcastle fans have every right to consider themselves a big club.

And this is why they decry the manner in which the club has been run off the pitch in the last 15 years. This isn’t just about Mike Ashley. It’s about John Hall, one of them, a real fan who dreamed of a team of 11 geordies winning the League, who had a vision of Newcastle United as an English equivalent of Barcelona...then decided to jack it in.

It’s about Hall’s son Douglas and his partner in crime Freddie Shepherd, who survived the News of the World sting in which not only did they slag off the women of the North East and Alan Shearer, but perhaps most damningly, took the piss out of the fans’ loyalty. Survived it, kept on taking advantage of that loyalty, but never displayed any signs of having the ability, the nous, to really move the club on.

Blimey, I’m getting worked up myself writing this, and I’m not even a fan. So I ask you to set your prejudices aside for a moment. Try not to think of the minority bedsheet brigade who seem to magically appear outside St James’s every time Sky Sports News roll up to cover the latest ‘crisis’. Try not to snigger at Keegan’s lack of tactical acumen. Just look at the stats above, both crowds and relative success on the pitch, and think how you would feel if this was your team, and those honoured enough to own your beloved club kept making such a pig’s ear of it. Yes there are boards the length and breadth of the country making a pig’s ear of their clubs – but to manage it on regular gates of 50,000 (48,000 of whom appear to buy a new replica strip every season), having had seven Top 6 finishes in a decade so recently, takes some beating.

Only Leeds comes near Newcastle when it comes to big one club cities. Leeds is one of the few clubs who arguably have been mismanaged even more badly than Newcastle. They also have a passionate fanbase, and looked set fair for a period of real, sustained success a few short years ago.

But something isn’t quite the same at Elland Road. I’m not going back to the minutiae of average gates, or top 6 finishes here, but speaking subjectively again. Maybe it’s because Elland Road itself is on the outskirts of town, or because Leeds also has rugby and cricket to support / fret over.

St James’s Park is about as central as a modern football ground gets, in the kind of raised position overlooking the rest of the city historically reserved for castles or cathedrals. It is in many ways the cathedral of modern day Newcastle. And football, even allowing for the presence of Jonny Wilkinson, is all the locals care about. This city is a sea of black & white all year round, not just when the new strip is released or a cup run embarked upon.

Maybe I’m now getting as overly romantic as the Toon Army itself, but I think there are fans nationwide (worldwide) bemoaning the ongoing loss of romance in the game. This is what Kevin Keegan understands, and Mike Ashley, for all his standing amongst the fans, doesn’t.

Ashley’s ‘for sale’ statement made a number of valid points – but way too late in the day. All the talk of a contemporary management structure, of the Arsenal model, of the unknown debts he inherited, of realistic aspirations in the modern game...where was it a year or so ago when he took over? Where was it 9 months ago when he first courted and then employed Keegan?

He got away with the silent routine for a few months due to goodwill and the smooth (by Newcastle standards) PR of fresh faced City lawyer Chris Mort, but this season, despite that first day at Old Trafford, he’s been drowning. The image of him downing his pint at Arsenal will haunt him like the brolly will haunt Steve McLaren.

So now Ashley appears to be undergoing a whistle stop tour of the world’s recession-proof mega rich, trying to justify why he wants a £200,000,000 profit on his damaged goods investment. Keegan waits in the wings, whispers that some potential buyers would reinstate him in an instant as their first PR move. And what of Dennis Wise? Well, if I may paraphrase Barry Davies, frankly, who cares?

Thing is, this could all take months rather than weeks to sort, and what odds poor Chris Hughton keeping the team out of a relegation battle for that long?

Back to our Times correspondent. No fans at any club deserve this...and we’d all whine and whinge if we got it (let’s face it, most of us like a good whine and whinge every week at the game regardless). Self-indulgent? Well we all have our obsessions, passions, vices, call them what you will, which we love to indulge – in Newcastle, indeed in the north east, football is the most popular (at the risk of making a Keegan-esque “people down south go to the theatre” generalisation). Self-pitying? It’s part of the make up of a football fan, unless you support Man United or Real Madrid. Deluded? No! Go back to the stats! There’s a popular chant when your team overturns a big deficit, “2-0 and you f***ed it up”. For Newcastle fans, it could be “regular Top 4 finishes, 50,000 gates and we f***ed it up”.

Only it isn’t “we”. It’s “they”. A succession of owners.

Real football fans don’t mock. They look at Luton, Rotherham, Bournemouth, Leeds, Newcastle...who knows, Spurs...and think “there but for the grace of God...”. And when romantic dreams of what your team might, just might, achieve are no longer worth having, are deemed delusional, then the very thing that makes football the world’s favourite game is at risk.

Tyne and Weary

goalfood’s nick gordon brown in support of the much maligned toon army...

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