could newcastle actually get relegated?!

a lot can happen in 3 weeks.

or not. newcastle united haven't so much changed as continued their inexorable, unbelievable decline into absolute farce. mike ashley decided he couldn't live with the criticism and released the most remarkable press release, moaning about the unexpected cost of running a club he bought without performing basic financial checks and invoking useless mush about being unable to bring his poor children to the game on saturday. the newcastle fans have responded by senselessly deifying kevin keegan, whilst the vaunted management team displayed about the same nous with their shortlist of replacements. george graham, david o'leary, terry venables, dave bassett... the names kept coming and jaws kept edging closer the floor. as pointed out by football365, there was a rather delicious irony in all of this, as on keegan's departure "sources" laughed at his supposed henry-ronaldo-etc list of transfer targets, condemning it as ultimate proof that the man wasn't cut out to be a manager in 2008, but the list of managerial candidates that eminated from the bowels of st james suggested, rather, a handful of decision makers with exactly the same problems.

unsurprisingly, the fortunes of the newcastle united team on the pitch have been little better. led by the hopelessly optimistic chris hughton, the toon lost to hull, at home, then participated in a hideous carling cup tie against their fellow depression-inducing, cellar dwelling friends from white hart lane. spurs - more on them soon - just about prevailed, getting their first domestic win of the season.

so, on friday morning, you would have been forgiven for suggesting that newcastle united had hit rock bottom. but, you would also have been wrong. because on friday afternoon newcastle united appointed a man that has been out of management since 2004; a man whose previous two jobs had seen failure in the lower tiers of english football; a man whose managerial peak came 11 years ago with an eighth place finish in the premier league.

on friday afternoon newcastle united appointed joe kinnear as their interim manager.

it might be that you respect kinnear's achievements with wimbledon in the nineties, the way he often managed to generate respectable league finishes with minute resources. and this is absolutely fair - what he did with wimbledon, homeless and without any sort of sustainable fan base or commercial model, was nothing short of amazing. but at the very least there should be an acknowledgement that the methods with which generated premier league success in 1997 are no longer always the methods that generate success nowadays; only those such as alex ferguson, managers who have had the ability to adapt and modify their style, have managed to bridge the premiership generation gap.

and so it goes. kinnear apparently isn't even likely to be in charge for more than 6 or 7 games: a takeover is apparently "imminent" (despite the fact it will take around 6 weeks to complete), at which point keegan will be back or shearer will installed in the job he surely lusts after. but this merely prolongs the period of upheaval, fully entrenching the club in crisis, awaiting a white knight that is nothing of the sort. keegan had the side in the right direction before his acrimonious departure, but how much credibility did he lose with the players when he walked out? and if dennis wise survived the takeover, surely his return would be impossible? shearer, on the other hand, lacks any sort of experience, and if we are to learn anything from his almost impossibly bad punditry, the man doesn't actually know a lot about football.

so could newcastle go down? another home defeat today leaves them second bottom, and it wouldn't really shock anyone if they didn't win a single one of their forthcoming games under joe kinnear. there is also the possibility of a mass exodus in january, with the potential for the more senior players to become utterly disenchanted with life in the north east (if they aren't already). if owen refuses to sign a new contract the club may hawk him around in the transfer window, and the symbolic importance that would have would be huge. you could quite easily envisage a situation in which 5 or 6 senior players request transfers.

if a prediction was totally necessary i would probably say they will escape relegation, for the simple reason that i believe there remains more quality in the newcastle side than at least 3 other teams in the league. but so often that counts for little and it may only be 6 games into the season but newcastle are undoubtedly in serious, unthinkable danger.