The unthinkable becomes reality

I fucking hate football.

Three days ago, on this very blog, I wrote "Failure in the Champions' League qualifier on Wednesday is unthinkable". Well, today thousands of Newcastle fans like myself have woken up to find the unthinkable has become reality. To say I was tempting fate would be a gross understatement. In his post-match interview Sir Bobby, on the verge of tears, didn't think to repeat his famous pronouncement of a few months back, which would have been entirely apt on this occasion: "You shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch because they might not lay eggs."

Let's look at the facts. We returned from Belgrade to Tyneside with a clean sheet, an away goal and a creditable performance in severely testing circumstances - and yet last night we contrived to waste our first leg lead, Partizan scoring an away goal of their own before we suffered our umpteenth failure over the last decade or so in a penalty shoot-out. Of our seven penalty-takers, only three scored - and two of those (Lua Lua and Jenas) had already fluffed penalties in horrendous fashion in the past few weeks.

How to describe the display? Anxious, disspirited, utterly abject. We have at most three first-team players who are in form - Shearer, Woodgate and Given - and both the outfield players in that threesome squandered their penalty-spot opportunity last night. Our midfield, on paper one of the strongest in England, is performing abysmally.

Let's not pull any punches here - this defeat is absolutely disastrous, not only from a financial perspective, but also from the perspective that we want to continue to progress as a club and a squad, and our talented youngsters need to be pitting themselves against the best in Europe on a regular basis if they're to improve. Of course, people will say at least we've got the consolation of the UEFA Cup. But we now find ourselves in exactly the same position as Manchester City, who will qualify for the competition tonight having finished fifth in the Fair Play League and then disposing of a bunch of Welsh part-timers in the qualifying round. All our gut-busting efforts to hold off Chelsea and Liverpool in the latter stages of last season have gone to waste. If Liverpool weren't in an equally bad state, I wouldn't begrudge their fans grumbling about the fact that we seized a golden (literally) opportunity from their grasp, only to squander it as cheaply as if it meant nothing to us.

It's at times like these that I wish Newcastle meant nothing, or at least very little, to me. I spent part of yesterday evening down the pub watching the Man Utd - Wolves match with a Man Utd fan who confessed to having never been to Old Trafford, who asked me who was playing in goal for them and who their new number seven was, and who hadn't even realised his team were playing until he'd arrived at the pub. Life must be so much easier.

To return to the facts staring in the face of everyone unfortunate enough to be a hardened Newcastle fan, we're barely two weeks into the new season and already we're out of the Champions' League and eight points adrift of Man Utd and Arsenal in the league (albeit with a game in hand). Last night's result will be a turning point in our season - of that there can be no doubt. Whether it's an upturn or a downturn is up (or down) to the players - but in my current mood I won't be rushing out to place a bet on Shearer holding the UEFA Cup aloft come May.