Magpies needed in the top flight

Apr 27 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

The rest of English football may want to see Newcastle suffer the humiliation of relegation but, according to Chief Sports Writer Luke Edwards, they would be making a big mistake.

IF it is true that you don’t really appreciate what you have got until it has gone, then the Premier League had better hope Newcastle United can somehow scramble to safety, because the top flight needs a club like this.

Such brash, bold statements have a tendency to rile football fans around the country, let alone those caught up in the ferocious partisan parochialism of the North East. It is a statement which will instantly lead to accusations of arrogance, illusions of grandeur, conceit and, perhaps, from some, of plain stupidity. I should know. I’m not from the North East. I once shared some of those views until, as someone at Durham County Cricket Club recently put it, I went native. For those who travel the length and breadth of the country to support their teams, the tendency of some United fans to boast about being the best in the country inevitably irritates and annoys.

Every football club has fantastic fans, but why are Newcastle’s any better than the 300 diehard followers of, say, Crewe, who follow their team just as devoutly, but without the sweetener of attractive top-flight football and the comfort of modern stadiums? They are not.

This is a football club which is constantly talked up by large sections of its support as one of the Big Ones, not just in England, or even Britain, but Europe. Much of that has to do with the number of fans it has and, more importantly in the modern era, as unpopular owner Mike Ashley will be aware, its turnover – something relegation, of course, would decimate. Yet, this is also a football club which has not won a single piece of major silverware since the Fairs Cup success of 1969 and has not laid claim to a domestic trophy since the FA Cup triumph in 1955.

As for the league, when you have to hark back to 1927, you may as well not mention it at all because most of those who are listening weren’t even a twinkle in their daddy’s eye when that came back to St James’s Park.

To put that into perspective, clubs such as Wimbledon (MK Dons), Leicester City, Norwich City, Luton Town, Blackburn Rovers, Stoke City, Derby County, Nottingham Forest, Ipswich Town, as well as local rivals Middlesbrough and Sunderland, have had more silverware success over the last 40 years than the supposedly mighty Newcastle United.

It is the lock, stock and smoking barrel counter-argument for anyone who wishes to knock everything Newcastle United claim to be.

Yet, this is not just about trophies, silverware and attendance figures. It is about the essence of a football club, it is about what this football club means to the city it calls home. Newcastle United isn’t just about football, it is about civic and regional pride. It is, and I do not think any other football club in England can say this, part of Tyneside culture in a way the Baltic Art Gallery and Sage Music Centre never can be because it is all-inclusive, all encompassing and all-consuming.

St James’s Park is not just the heart of the city – it is the heartbeat of the city. But, as Michael Owen has said, as new assistant manager Iain Dowie (pictured left) has recently argued, it is only when you live and work here that you really understand and appreciate that.

In that respect, Newcastle United is not just a big club with a massive turnover, a big stadium and big ambition, it is – to borrow a phrase from former Sunderland manager Roy Keane – a proper one. And for all of its riches, glitz and glamour, English football needs those. It needs Newcastle – and it needs Sunderland – more than it needs the new-build clubs with their rich owners and their Legoland stadiums on out-of-town retail parks.

The supporters of such clubs will undoubtedly disagree, but I doubt the bigwigs who run the Premier League, Sky Television and the countless other sponsors and foreign broadcasters would disagree. Newcastle United is one of English football’s cash cows and if money makes the world go round, it sends football into the sort of spin you normally associate with a fairground ride. Just ask rival chairmen who they would like to see stay up when they think about away attendances next season and compare that to the answer of those in the Championship.

However, this is not just about the 52,000 people who turn up for each game. It is about the other 200,000 people who live in the city and beyond whose lives are intertwined with the black-and-white stripes and the marketing men and women know it. Even those rival fans who have laughed and sniggered all year at another catalogue of disasters and faux pas, if they are honest, when they are alone at night with their programme collections, even they would miss Newcastle.

After all, what would the Premier League be like without yet another instalment from the St James’s soap opera because, as we know, life is never dull where the Magpies are concerned and football needs entertainment like Hollywood needs movie stars.