Newcastle United have won just four league games at St James’s Park all season, so why would anyone expect them to win their next three on the trot? Chief sports writer Luke Edwards reports

As a result, and this is perhaps the most depressing and deflating fact of all, Newcastle’s safety is no longer even in their own hands.

No matter what they do, no matter if they win these next three home games and go to Liverpool and Aston Villa and pick up points, if the other teams near the bottom of the table do the same, Newcastle will be relegated.

Realistically, given the state of the other teams around them, Newcastle are going to need Hull to slip up and hope Middlesbrough’s self-belief has evaporated following their failure to beat Fulham at home last weekend.

The Tigers, managed by perhaps the most disliked manager in the business, South Shields’ Phil Brown, are the only team in the league in worse form than Newcastle and they have still to navigate games against Arsenal and Manchester United.

As for Boro, they look even less capable of scoring goals than those in black and white stripes, which can only be a good thing for Shearer’s misfiring forward line.

So what can help drag Newcastle out of this deep and dark hole they find themselves in? Despite everything that I have said previously in this article, it is St James’s Park and the fans who fill it.

If Newcastle’s supporters can generate the sort of intimidating partisan atmosphere which gives opposition players the yips and Newcastle’s ones a fraction more energy, desire and belief, then the Magpies have a chance.

Beye believes St James’s Park merely needs to be “what it always is,” but it needs to be more. Newcastle supporters may be “fantastic” according to Beye, but for those with a long memory, they can be even better than that.

It needs to be, to borrow some of the confrontational language of Turkish football, so hot that it feels like Hell for those who have made the trip north to follow their side.

Yet, that is asking supporters who have been let down more than ever this season to rouse themselves from their apathy, to urge them to spark the team into action and dig the club out of trouble when that same team has betrayed their loyalty so often.

It is, at the end of such a traumatic season, a big ask – but it is about the only thing Newcastle United have left in their favour as a football club.

It is an ask which, more than likely, will also be heeded by those who, despite the ever-changing political landscape at St James’s Park, will do everything they can to keep it out of the Championship. It is up to the players to do the same.