Bashing Geordies sets us up for main course

GEORDIES are a strange breed; Newcastle only have to announce the signing of a second-rate player and for whom they have paid well over the odds and they all descend on St James’s Park in their thousands, loud and invariably bare-chested (and that’s just the women), telling all and sundry that this is the signing that will change their fortunes.

So when it was revealed that Alan Shearer would be taking up the reins, there was mass hysteria in the North-East on the scale of a Duran Duran gig circa 1984.

There was a bizarre atmosphere at Saturday’s game, considering the hype and excitement outside the ground. The Newcastle fans were very quiet and subdued inside — perhaps it had finally dawned on them, as their team laboured around the pitch, that it was going to take more than their Messiah to save them from the ignominy of relegation.