The same old Toon

EVERYWHERE bar Tyneside, the reaction to the news that Shay Given wants to stay at Newcastle United has been one of stunned disbelief.

And, come to think of it, they’re probably pinching themselves around St James’ Park too.

Arsenal, Man United and Liverpool could all do with a keeper of Given’s class, but is the Donegal man asserting that he wants to see out the two years left on his contract at a club which, despite plenty of competition, is currently running away with the title of Most Dysfunctional Family in Premiership football.

Of course, Given could still be on the move in the summer - “unless somebody tells me otherwise, I’ll be a Newcastle player next season,” he says diplomatically - but if he does end up having to eat his own words, he shouldn’t beat himself up about it. That’s Lee Bowyer’s job, after all.

Last season, Newcastle finished fifth and reached the semi-finals of the UEFA Cup but that still wasn’t enough to keep Bobby Robson in a job. Twelve months on, Newcastle are in the bottom half of the table, out of Europe again, out of the FA Cup and are attempting to arrest a desperate slide which has seen them endure a run of five defeats broken only by the false dawn of that first leg UEFA Cup victory over Sporting Lisbon.

In the course of just five games, Newcastle have leaked 14 goals - and yet, no one is blaming Given. On the contrary, the consensus is that the Irish goalkeeper is one of the few players to have emerged with his credibility intact from the club’s recent implosion. And having been present in the Millennium Stadium last Sunday, I can confirm from first-hand experience that, but for Given, Man United might have scored six or seven.

Of course, simply being outplayed has almost been the least of Newcastle’s problems in the course of a month which began with Dyer and Bowyer turning on each other, and then saw Laurent Robert turning on his manager. With Bellamy doing the business north of the border, Kluivert failing miserably to do likewise on Tyneside, and Souness still living down to his billing as a manager who trades on reputation rather than achievement, it all adds up to another season of woe for the club’s long-suffering supporters.

For once, the cliché has real substance. The last time Newcastle fans were over the moon, Neil Armstrong had still to walk on it - it was 1969 when the club last picked up a major piece of silverware (the now defunct Fairs Cup). In the interim there have been high points - Gazza’s emergence, Keegan’s return, a title-chasing run in 1996, Shearer signing - but all these stories have ended up filed under ‘what might have been’.

And yet the fans have never lost the faith. In Cardiff last weekend, such was the scale of the invasion from the north-east that it was possible to imagine that you’d entered a monochrome world.

Admittedly, my access to the ground was by the Newcastle end, but even inside it was the Toon Army who contributed by far the most to the atmosphere - and they were still standing and singing when their team was down and out.

In the new football world of corporate branding, PLCs and billionaires - a world to which the club’s owners desperately want to belong - there is still something heartwarmingly traditional, even old-fashioned, about Newcastle.

For a start, the vast majority of Newcastle fans seem actually to hail from Newcastle, an unusual phenomenon in a Premiership of an increasingly multinational hue when it comes to clubs’ support bases. The evidence of the eye also suggests that Newcastle have a higher contingent of elderly supporters, men and women with a lifelong association with their hometown club. History hangs heavy on the Magpies - Liverpool might look to sixties Merseybeat for their club anthem, but the Geordies hark way back to 1862 and the Blaydon Races for theirs.

It’s no surprise to learn that I’m not alone in this neck of the woods in having something of a soft spot for the Magpies. A friend, a Liverpool fan, calls them his ‘mistress’, the club with which he stays offside for a bit of thrilling intrigue.

They say that the further north you go in England, the more celtic the place gets, which may partly explain why, on my first visit to Newcastle, I was struck by its similarities to Dublin, not least in the dry humour of its citizens. On my way to the ground, I even found myself asking the taxi driver to take me to “St James’ Gate.” It turned out I wasn’t the first Dubliner to make that verbal slip - perhaps it’s a black and white thing.

That was in 1992, when Keegan was newly in charge, Newcastle were on their way back up from the Second Division and there were three Irish internationals in the team - Liam O’Brien, David Kelly and Kevin Sheedy. They beat arch-rivals Sunderland with a Kelly goal that day, and the faithful went off with dreams of greater glories to come.

Years later, they’re still dreaming. The greening of Newcastle goes on with Carr, O’Brien and Given, and the fans continue to provide passionate support, but it’s hard to see how Souness can bring them the success they so desperately crave.

Ultimately, that job may yet fall to the club’s iconic traditionalist, Alan Shearer. In the week in which Alex Ferguson allegedly gave Roy Keane his blessing as his successor, there must have been plenty of Newcastle fans who were reminded that Souness has said much the same about their own inspirational leader.

And for the majority, you suspect, it’s a day that can’t come soon enough.