Sweeping forward as a unit, tight and quick passing, power and speed all over the park, solid and brave in defence… all things that define our opponents and all things that we haven’t seen at Gallowgate for a long, long time now. Results like this are deeply depressing these days as they highlight just how far we’ve fallen since those halcyon times under Special K. Portsmouth came up here and made us look foolish, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing after eleven minutes.

1-4 didn’t flatter them, either. They had two stone-wall penalties dismissed and our goal was a supreme slice of fortune for the deeply disappointing Michael Owen, who looks incredibly one-dimensional at the minute and who is being starved of any service at all – which obviously doesn’t help. I have to say I’m starting to get worried, even though it’s still incredibly early days under the new regime. I cannot stress enough how important it is we get through this patch and get a result in the Village of the Damned on Saturday, otherwise the calls for Sam’s neck will not simply be coming from the knee-jerk specialists.

At Newcastle, there’s not often a way back from the brink as the pressure simply becomes too much for players and staff alike to handle, I pray we don’t push another manager to this point. I do not advocate blind faith, but patience isn’t a lot to ask in Sam’s fifth month in charge. I am as worried as any about our lack of suitable tactics or ideas, Sam’s odd team selections, the continual dropping of Martins and numerous other “quirks” which we’re struggling to understand, but the bloke needs more than 4 months of our time to make this club and team his own.

Keep the faith for now - it’s too soon to be calling for the sack, but this was an absolute disaster.

You don’t need me to tell you that we were utterly diabolical - that’s stating the bloody obvious. Portsmouth going 3-0 up so quickly was a complete shellshock. Their first two were both absolute thunderbolts, both fantastic strikes that I don’t think Harper could have done an awful lot about. The fault lies with the defence, which was all over the place. Harper shouldn’t have come out the way he did for the third - Benjani waltzed through into what was effectively an open goal - but, I think the defence made him panic. Had the first two not have gone in, I don’t think he’d have made that mistake.

Cacapa had an absolute nightmare, and when Rozehnal came on, we did look a little bit more settled. Getting a goal back, we did rally a little bit, but if we were going to get back into the game, we needed a second before half time, and of course it didn’t come. The second half just seemed sloppy and resigned to the fact that the game was lost. I found the substitution of Milner for Emre baffling, as the obvious candidate to come off was clearly Joey Barton, who still seems a yard off the pace (which is understandable coming back from a long-ish layoff).

Those that weren’t having nightmare games were annonymous. I can excuse the strikers for this because they need to get in balls from the midfield, but sadly, the midfield was also largely annonymous today. There were two exceptions. Two players who put the effort and work in - Nicky Butt and Steven Taylor.

When a team goes away from home and does enough to win the game within 12 minutes, it’s unacceptable. The first one was a cracker admittedly and was rising all the time making it virtually unsavable. Then the shambles ensued. Sloppy, amateurish, unorganised dogshit football. The same old individual errors reared their ugly heads yet again. Allardyce ensured that Cacapa became the focus of the fans’ fury as he got the hook after only 14 minutes. Portsmouth couldn’t believe their luck and took full advantage of the situation and simply dropped off and soaked it up.

We never got going at all and looked a poor, poor side. Quite what Allardyce sees in the switching wingers thing is beyond me. I know the theory is that they can run at their man and cut inside and get a shot off but the need the f****** ball first. Which brings me nicely to Butt and Barton. The pair of them looked totally out of sorts and frankly seemed scared shitless of Muntari and the excellent Diop. Smith and Owen looked disinterested and rarely threatened to create something out of nothing. Martins came on showed willing and Emre was neat and tidy but Portsmouth ran out victors without getting out of second gear.

The piss-poor showings are racking up now. Reading, Derby, Portsmouth…Allardyce had f****** better have something up his sleeve this week to get this lot organised and on the same page. Another shambolic and impotent performance like that shower of s**** we saw on Saturday will see him come under REAL pressure. He certainly doesn’t want to be the first bloke to take a Newcastle team to Wearside and lose for the first time in nearly 30 years. Get that rabble of a squad sorted. Very soon.