Cast your mind back to the early 1990s (not too hard for all you Keegan bandwagon jumpers). Those were the days, eh? Sky had invented Premiership football, Andy Gray didn’t talk drivel, Hansen didn’t look perma-bored and the Toon were everybody’s second favourite team. Liverpool 4 NUFC 3. NUFC 5 Man Utd 0. Andy Cole, Peter Beardsley, Daveeed, Sir Les. Keegan with the pointy finger “I’d love, just love it if we beat them”. Everyone loved us, didn’t they, they couldn’t get enough of us!

Fast forward to 2007 and other teams’ fans routinely line up to have a go – we’re “a laughing stock” or “deluded” or “we think we’re a big club and we’re not” – give them a platform and they’ll lay into us. We’re derided for signing big name players for big fees and paying big wages. The national press queue up to knock us – we’re described as a circus, a madhouse, our defence is a national joke, our players are out of control, our chairman is an idiot and so on. Our club seems nothing but a bunch of clichés and even respected commentators will trot out the same stock lines and snigger behind their hands.

Now, I’m as critical of our club as the next armchair dwelling fickle fan (which of course I am) but I can’t help but wonder what happened along the way. What made us as popular as a fart in a space suit? Why are we more deluded than Spurs fans for instance, why don’t Bolton or Reading or Boro cop flak over their leaky defences (look at the season stats and you’ll see what I mean), what about other clubs wasting their money on crap players (Juan Sebastian Veron anyone)? Why is our club run worse than Everton for instance? And why do people never pass up the chance to get at us?

I know it’s fashionable to blame Freddy Shepherd for all the club’s problems, but I don’t think the PR situation is his fault. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think he’s exactly helped much over the years with his foot firmly wedged in his fleshy mouth (and I was disappointed to see him recently calling us the eight biggest club in the world yet again, which doesn’t endear us to anyone). And our TV image hasn’t helped either, from Dalglish’s sour face and graceless manner (Stevenage Borough springs to mind) to Sky’s coverage of our club complete with stereotypical fat bellied beer monsters and snotty nosed charvers prompted by Jim White to witter on about bringing Keegan back, or worse still winning the league. And Roeder could bore for England.

No, I think the clue’s in the first paragraph and the answer is jealousy, pure and simple. Jealous that we were The Entertainers, that Sky loved us, that drove them mad with envy. Jealous that we could be shite and still get 52,000 crowds year on year. Jealous that we can win absolutely nothing and still sign Alan Shearer or Michael Owen. Jealous of our money. Jealous that Geordies love the club from cradle to grave, regardless. Jealous, jealous, jealous. And that makes them love to watch us fail.

Which brings me to Sam Allardyce. For the first time in years I feel like we could really get somewhere. I hope Big Sam’s the man to do it. And I don’t really care whether his football appeals to the masses, in fact I don’t ever want us to be anybody’s second favourite team again. In my opinon it’s high time we moved on from that era defining our club and being the benchmark for everything we do. Time to take off the rose tinted glasses. Better to be the country’s least favourite team, it means they’ll go to SJP expecting to get their arses kicked. If that means a team that batters the opposition into submission with our fans roaring them on, I’ll buy that for a dollar. Nobody likes us and we don’t care. Howay Newcastle.