Commenting on our hard-fought draw against Arsenal a few weeks ago, I praised the side of the performance that they produced that night. However, I went on to say that the following four games against Birmingham, Fulham, Derby and Wigan would be the real tests to see if we were really turning things around. Well, those four games have come and gone, and unfortunately we’ve failed the test miserably.

Those matches have seen us play against teams which I think it’s fair to say have struggled so far this season, and can anyone honestly say that we played well in even one of those games?

Birmingham were unlucky not to get at least a point, with a last gasp goal courtesy of Habib Beye. It took a Joey Barton penalty in stoppage time to take all three points from the dismal encounter against Fulham at Craven Cottage, which aside from being deathly dull looked like a nailed-on goalless draw. Last Sunday at home to Derby, Mark Viduka’s second equaliser late on saved us from the embarrassment of losing both our matches against a side that is rock bottom of the league. Out of the meagre seven points they’ve picked up so far, four of them have come from their games against us. I feel sorry for those who travelled down to the JJB yesterday. The bleak journey down to a bleak stadium on a bleak retail park on the edge of a bleak town is enough to knock any festive cheer right out of you as it is, without having to put up with the crap that Allardyce served up.

I fully accept that you can’t play fantastic football every game. Some games require you to battle hard, dig in and grind out a result. But by and large the ethos should be to play attacking football on the ground, particularly at a club like Newcastle. One of the presents I got for Christmas was the new book ‘And They Wonder Why We Drink?’ by The Mag writer, Billy Furious. At the beginning of the book (and I hope Mr Furious doesn’t mind me quoting him here) he describes Allardyce as “probably football’s Antichrist, sent by the devil to destroy football.” It’s true. What ‘Big Sam’ has us playing is a crime against the game and the team that we all love. I personally find it heartbreaking to see us clogging the ball around, it’s insulting to us, to the players and to the club, and it is an act of sheer vandalism.

Some of those who continue to advocate sticking with Allardyce I’ve noticed have come out saying things like he just needs to change his mentality. I’m sorry but that is not going to happen! When he came to Newcastle I (like many others) was sceptical due to his style of play. I came around to thinking perhaps given the resources and players available here that he might actually change his ways. Alas we’re now halfway through the season and we’re playing the same dull, clogging football that Bolton played under his charge. He is obstinate. Like Souness, he can never be seen to be wrong, and he will stick with his system come what may. In any case, I doubt that he knows how to play any other way, and so I fear that we’re stuck with with his ugly-as-sin anti-football for as long as he remains at St James’.

The other excuse for sticking with Allardyce is that you have to give him time. On the face of it, this is a rational, sensible reason. But there are serious flaws in the argument. Firstly, whilst it can take time to build up a side that you want, it should not take the 3-5 years that Allardyce thinks it will take to turn things around here.

Lets go back to the summer. It was an eventful few months for several clubs, and for two Premier League clubs in particular. Both of these clubs had had disappointing seasons, finishing in the bottom half of the table. Both have big support bases and large stadiums, but had suffered from a lack of trophies for many years. And then in the summer, it was all change as they both changed their managers and were taken over by new billionaire owners. If you haven’t already twigged, the two clubs in question are of course, Newcastle United and Manchester City. Man City actually had a worse season than us last time out, and Sven Goran Eriksson was appointed City manager after Allardyce was installed at the Toon. And yet Man City have gone like a train and have been riding high in the Top 5 for the majority of the first half of the season, and playing attractive attacking football to boot.

Looking at our own history, in February 1992 we were dicing with relegation to the (old) third division. Then Keegan came in and the change was instantaneous. Bristol City were battered 3-0 in his first game in charge, and the team rallied and avoided the drop. The next season we took the (new) first division (the Championship today) by storm, went up to the Premier League as champions and continued to play the same way there. Fifteen months after Keegan’s appointment, when we were looking like dropping into the third tier of English football we finished third in the Premier League. Three years after Keegan’s appointment, we would finish the 1994/95 season in 6th place - a little wobble compared to the previous season, but we’d still come along way. February 1997 was five years on from his arrival. By then he’d left Newcastle a month earlier (on January 8, which was coincidentally my 18th). During his last full season in charge, we’d been top of the league for a large chunk, before eventually finishing in second. In October 1996, we demolished Man United 5-0 and then destroyed Spurs 7-1 a few days after Christmas. The end of that season, we again finished second and qualified for the Champions League. Dalglish played his part, but much of the achievement was also down to Keegan. So lets not here any of this ‘it’ll take five years to turn things around’ shite because it shouldn’t. Five years is a hell of a long time, and people who say otherwise are just trying to cover their backs.

Do I expect Allardyce to replicate feits such as these? No, but on second thoughts he is in a far better position than Keegan was when he became manager of NUFC. What you at least expect is to see an improvement in how the team is playing. We haven’t seen that despite having decent players. I actually don’t have too much of a problem with the players that Allardyce has brought in, or the ones that he got shot of for that matter. He’s actually given us a greater depth, so that when injuries have come about, we’ve had cover.

But, the problem lies with his team selections. He completely stifles the midfield with Geremi, Butt and Smith all rammed into the centre, leaving no one on the wings, Meanwhile a frustrated Charles N’Zogbia is played out of position as left back, despite Jose Enrique, a proper left back being left on the bench.Why is Enrique on bench? Because according to Allardyce, he’s not ready yet. How is he ever going to be ready if he doesn’t get games (and I mean full games) under his belt. It’s not like we’re talking about some wet behind the ears kid fresh out of the academy. We’re talking about a player who has plenty of experience of playing in La Liga. Of course he needs time to adapt, but the argument still stands. How can he do this if he doesn’t get game time? Poor James Milner suffers as well, farmed out on the left. In a recent interview in ‘The Mag’ Allardyce spoke of how Milner doesn’t play on the right “so let’s put that to bed once and for all”. No Sam, let’s not. I find it strange that Milner was much more effective when he did play down the right hand side. We can all see that playing 4-4-2 with Milner down the right wing and N’Zogbia down the left with Enrique at left back would seem much more and sensible provide service to the strikers, but that wouldn’t fit in with Allardyce’s 4-3-3 (if that is the formation. It’s often impossible to work out what the formation is), lump it up to the front would it?

After the Wigan game, Allardyce blamed the players for not performing and thus putting his position in jeopardy. Sam, you’re the problem, not the players! I genuinely think the players we have are good enough to perform well, but they’re being played in the wrong position and the wrong tactics are being used. I’m convinced that in some of the games this season, they haven’t been entirely sure what to do. I don’t blame the players, I feel sorry for them. How can they be expected to play well, when they’re not being played in their proper positions? There’s an old saying: ‘a bad workman blames his tools’.

And so we come to the third reason for sticking with Sam. We can’t keep chopping and changing our managers. It’s a point of view that I can sympathise with. Indeed it’s something that I’ve sometimes caught myself thinking. We’ve become notorious for getting rid of managers, and the media and fans of other clubs who see a handful of our games, and the odd highlights here and there on Match of the Day or Sky, but don’t really have too much of an idea of what is going on at St James’, are very quick to give their views by phoning or texting their ill-informed opinions and love to latch on to this and slate us, the fans for putting the pressure on.

But we’re the ones who have to put up with it. We’re the ones who watch the shit, frsutrating tactics game in, game out. We’re the ones who have to endure the crap performances against shite teams and the humiliating defeats, not the media and certainly not the fans of other clubs.

We’ve only been calling for manager’s head in the last few years because bad appointments have been made. Keegan was here for five years. When he left, we were all devestated, and left because of PLC issues, not because of the fans or how the team was playing. Bobby Robson, spent five years here, and it was only really the last few months of his last season that things went a bit awry, and even when he went, there were thousands who wanted him to stay, and those of us who did want him to go still love him and remember all the good work he did and all the good times we had. We don’t criticise our managers lightly.

The fact is that Shepherd and the previous regime made bad appointments. I felt that Robson had to go, but the problem was how Shepherd dealt with it. Aside from the fact that Bobby deserved to have been treated with respect and dignity, Shepherd panicked. He sacked Robson hastily without thinking through who to replace him with, and so we ended up with Souness, who was on the verge of being sacked at Blackburn (they must have been pissing themselves, picking up compensation for someone they were about to ditch). Souness of course turned out to be a disaster and he needed to be got rid of. Roeder came in as a caretaker, and then as manager until the end of the season. When he was given the job permanently, a lot of us were uneasy about it, and rightfully so as it turned out, although given the revival of the team under him for the rest of the 2005/2006 season maybe you can make a case for him being offered the job. When it was Roeder’s time to go at the end of last season, it was clear that we needed a change of management. The problem, yet again was that the wrong man was appointed. Allardyce was never going to be the right man for Newcastle. He did well for Bolton, where finishing in 7th or 8th and qualifying for Europe a couple of times is, in their terms a success, and he achieved it through grit and battling rather than by attacking attractive football that is the ethos that we live by. Secondly, is 7th or 8th what we are after? Of course it isn’t. We have (or should have) ambition. We should regularly be in Europe, and aiming for the Champions League and the Top 4. The fact that we have been there in the recent past means that it is not and should not be out of the realms of our dreams and aspirations.

I’ve seen nothing from Allardyce to suggest that we’re going to achieve great things with him in charge, and I think that half a season is ample time to have seen an improvement, an indication or a glimpse of good times ahead. All I’ve seen so far is misery and frustration.

Allardyce was the last bad appointment by a chairman and board that were ousted shortly afterwards. I don’t see a future for him here (not a succesful one anyway). So, as we go into the new year, lets get rid of this final remenant of the Shepherd era that brought us misery and heartache. Off the field, things have improved. We have a new owner and a new chairman who so far haven’t put a foot wrong, and want to improve relations between the club and the fans. So let’s start afresh. I’m not advoacte the ’sack now, think later’ option. That’s what got us into this mess in the first place. But we should think about the options. I’d like us to appoint someone who fits the ethos and the desire of the club. We should look for a new manager, but take our prefered style of football and our aspirations into account. Under Allardyce we will go nowhere fast and suffer embarressments and frustrations along the way. Lets look at other options.