I was chatting at work today with my mate Brian - he’s a Chelsea fan, but I’m usually a fairly generous person, so I speak to him - and I found myself using the word “sad” when talking about the Newcastle game against Blackburn with him.

Like a good murder mystery I won’t tell you whodunnit straight away. Let me give you a bit of background. The African Nations Cup has probably been a bit of a saving grace for Graeme Souness.

The news is full of managers having a good whinge to anyone who’ll listen because they’ve been deprived of two or three first team players, who for some inexplicable reason would rather head off to the relative heat of Egypt to represent their respective countries, than stay in England and get battered black and blue around the park in 3 degrees of pissing rain on a dismal Saturday afternoon.

Poor old Sam Allardyce – how can his team possibly be expected to get results with 3 first team players missing, and another bloke gone who most people think actually plays for Newcastle? He has a point, does he not? How can any team expect to be competitive in this, possibly the best league in the world, with so many stars missing from their line-up?

Is Big Sam just a big cry baby? Don’t think so. Take Arsenal for example. Take 8 of their top players out. What kind of force would they be without Campbell, Ljundberg, Reyes, Pires, Henry et al? No. I’m not comparing like for like here, but a team’s best players are their best players, no matter which team it is. You could rip the heart out of any Premiership team and speculate on how long they would survive, so why should we be surprised when it happens to Newcastle?

So maybe after all this there are a few thousand sensible souls out there with a more sympathetic view of Souness’s situation. He would give Dean Saunders’ right arm at the moment to have just 4 players out. Before you rise up and suggest tying me to a wooden stake I realise that by definition it’s unfair to refer to Newcastle fans as “sensible souls”.

I think its accepted that the words “sensible”, “Newcastle” and “fans” are not normally found in the same statement of fact – that’s what Toon fans are all about, a fanaticism that goes far beyond reason; a dedication that defies logic. Souness is currently probably the least popular manager of the Toon in living memory, but a turnout in excess of 51,000 would suggest that most fans put loyalty to the club above loyalty to the manager, and that’s exactly how it should be.

Support for the club can win games. How many teams out there could produce the goods with that kind of crisis? I used to work for a big round Santa-esque individual who could probably mix cocktails on his gut if you got him laughing. The problem was, though, that the only thing you could depend on him for was his uncanny ability to surprise you with his inconsistency.

If you performed well, you were part of a team. If you made a mistake you were on your own. Not dissimilar to the board at St. James’s. Has anyone else thought it a bit of an anomaly that Shepherd went from Fat Fred to Saint Fred when he signed Owen, but Souness is getting the stick because Luque is taking his time to settle in? Having said that - in all fairness to Fred he hasn’t said anything against Souness in the press.

There I go again – off for a wander with the subject not even visible on the horizon. I just watched the Blackburn game and have to say that despite us having a hatful of players unavailable due to their involvement in the Ambulance Stations Cup I thought that the team actually played as well as I’ve seen them play for a while.

They were stringing passes together, making goalscoring opportunities and actually looking like a team for a change. OK, so we could have done with a finisher out there, but considering the injuries didn’t they do well? How many games have you seen this season where Newcastle’s scoring chances could be counted on one thumb?

Bowyer could have had a hat-trick. How many times can you say that? I have a dog who I’m convinced suffered some kind of brain damage before we got him. Almost every day he lies down under the coffee table for a nap. When he wakes up he invariably stands straight up and cracks his skull on the underside of the table. Its quite scary really that after 18 months of this he still hasn’t figured out that you can’t stand up straight when the roof is 12 inches lower than your own height. He sleeps under the bed too. The connection is spooky.

The key words here are “nap” and “learn”. While I’m trying to be generally supportive of Souness here, I really do think that it’s about time that he reconsidered what appears to be the usual practice of giving Titus Bramble warm milk and cookies for lunch on a match day. I’m pretty sure it’s having an adverse affect on his ability to focus between 3 and 5pm.

On a more serious note do club physicals include vision and hearing tests? I only ask because when he gets the ball he never seems to know where the opposition front men are. It’s like the old Christmas panto - “He’s behind you!”

On Saturday he somehow managed not to hear forty odd thousand screaming Geordies yell “MAN ON!” Along with the decline of Law and Order in the UK and the abuse of Social Services, Bramble has become a bit of a favourite rant of mine. To my mind he has been responsible for giving away too many goals over the last couple of seasons.

He should have a health warning tattooed across his forehead. “By Order Of The Surgeon General – Geordies Beware – Observation Of This Individual May Cause Heart Attacks”. And I still haven’t made the point. What was it about this game that actually resulted in me using the word “sad”?

Not the performance of the team. Well done lads. You wuz robbed! Not the (apparent lack of) tactics of Manager Graeme Souness. It wasn’t even the lack of urgency shown by the apparently narcoleptic Titus Bramble. What forced me to explore the merits of this adjective was the sight, on globally broadcast TV, of a group of presumably Geordie teenagers verbally abusing Souness behind hid back following the final whistle.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion, and even the right to express it (though I personally reserve the right to withdraw that statement at a later more convenient date when it serves to prove a point). But while I admire your dedication to, and enthusiasm for, the cause, when your entire lifespan probably equates to less than half of his professional experience, then I think I’m fairly safe in making the statement that, gentlemen, at this particular moment in time, regardless of his performance so far, and in particular taking into consideration the circumstances under which he is plying his trade, you haven’t yet even earned the right to wipe Souness’s arse.

Nuff Sed!

Archie Brand, Bahrain.

P.S. – He’s asleep under the coffee table, but I’m sure Titus would say “bye” if he were awake.