Start just as you left off last time

The start of a new season always brings the tantalising promise that the sins of the previous campaign can be forgotten. No such luck with Newcastle Utd.

Every team strives for consistency – though only if that involves consistently emerging victorious. It’s fitting that the only consistent thing about my frustratingly inconsistent team is itself hugely frustrating – the ability to manoeuvre themselves into a winning position away from home only to toss away two points through a fatal lack of concentration at the death.

All the more galling on this occasion was the fact that Middlesbrough’s decisive second equaliser struck not Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink’s head but his hand. Not so much the hand of God as the hand of a man whom Geordie fans had spent the afternoon calling “a fat Eddie Murphy”…

But, being mindful of the facts that this was only the first game of the season, and that other sides turned in far more abject displays (not least Inspector Sands’s Charlton – you can read all the gory details on the excellent All Quiet In The East Stand), the prophesies of doom can be postponed, at least at present. Despite a familiar capitulation, there were also many positives to take from the game. Carr and Milner both made solid debuts, while Butt was an assured performer in the middle of the park, showing Steve Maclaren exactly what he missed out on; up front Bellamy looked sharp and took his goal well, Shearer celebrated his 34th birthday a day late with a well-taken penalty, and Kluivert and Ameobi came on to useful effect; and at the back the central defensive partnership of Hughes and Elliott – makeshift to say the least, following the pre-season conjunctivitis epidemic – did well, Given making several fine stops on the occasions when the defence was breached.

Other than the failure to secure all three points, the only real blot on the copybook was the rumours of a new spat, almost as soon as Sir Bobby and Shearer have held clear-the-air talks. This time the manager’s allegedly at loggerheads with Dyer, who – would you believe it? – is apparently behaving like a primadonna. If there’s any truth in it, he needs to pull his socks up and realise it’s a squad game, or ship out. I feel like I’m now part of a minority of fans who believe that Dyer is still an asset to the club, and my patience can’t be tried for too much longer.