Newcastle United 1- 2 Blackburn Rovers

Typical Newcastle United, it’s been said by many following last night’s damp squib at home to Blackburn Rovers, a game which they deservedly lost 2-1. Ruddy typical, if you’re a kindly old man weary to this club’s trajectory; bastard bloody fucking typical, if you’re the young gentleman spitting your ire in to my ear on the metro journey home. But typical all the same.

Consider though, that the typical elements spoken of related to the team building the fans’ hopes up and then dashing them. And, yes, there was a hint of seen all this before as Blackburn scored their second goal from their only attack in the second half and our players looked at one another wearing the irritated expressions of somebody just in from work being informed it’s their turn to walk the dog. But to arrive at this slice of typicality, the fans’ hopes had to be raised in the first place, which they were via a stunning home win against Sunderland and an even more stunning win at The Emirates- neither of which, in performance or result, have exactly typified this club in recent years. The Arsenal result in fact was so impressive that it was marked by a strange feeling of regret that on my first ever visit to that stadium I have immediately rendered every subsequent visit as a let down, it being highly unlikely that we will ever go there again in my life time and pass them to death as we did in large spells on Sunday; it was the sheer antithesis of ‘typical’.

And it’s not as if that Arsenal game was a convoluted dream sequence. A bad result against Blackburn doesn’t scrub that result, nor does it suddenly make us a bad team. But it seems that in this frustrating, and at times outright bewildering, season of two steps forward, one step back our fans our taking the negatives to heart and being too quick to believe it’s the good results that are the confidence tricks.

And, yes, it’s hard to blame them for that when we play as poorly as we did last night. Too many players- Williamson, Simpson, Shola (not fit), Nolan- had terrible games, others like Tiote, Enrique and Collocini played nowhere near the level they’re capable of. Conceding the first goal to Blackburn- Tiote guilty of over confidence, or, if you have aspirations of teaching P.E to timid children, fannying about with the thing inside the box like a nugget- is a nightmare, to do it early in the game a death knell. Earlier in the day, I had insisted at Five a Side that I got to ‘be’ Tiote. My performance was the usual shambolic mixture of over earnest tackling, negligible ball control and dense stupidity. He improved in the second half, but in the first it seemed that rather than Cheick waiting for me to play at his level, he was attempting to meet me halfway.

It was freezing cold and, frankly, the biggest shock of the night was us scoring, Carroll ghosting in and heading it impressively back in to the corner from whence it came. As always, the overriding emotion of watching that man’s football team playing football is to dedicate thanks to a higher being (em, Mike Ashley, in this case) that that man is no longer managing our football club.

Newcastle 5- 1 Sunderland

There is a strange quirk of old friends: no matter how long they’ve been apart from one another, as soon as they’re back in company together they immediately regress to old speaking and behavioural patterns. It’s why when University friends meet up decades after graduation they immediately start shouting loudly about girls they both slept with in Freshers' week and punishing each other for drinking with their left hand, and lots of other zany things they would be embarrassed about doing in front of their new, adult friends- adult friends who, in some instances, don’t even know they were once part of the rugby society.

Despite their protestations to the contrary, I like to consider Sunderland a friend. Not a good one, as such, not one whose company you look to keep (when people ruminate on Newcastle's relegation a few years back I like to propose the theory that it was done simply because keeping up pretences with Sunderland, who had always before done- in the form of several relegations of their own- what they could to be gone out of our lives every other season, was becomming simply too tiring), but a companion of sorts, somebody to keep us company as everybody else jets around the place, sometimes not even paying attention at all to Newcastle United (unless we’re sacking our manager that week). As the ear splitting reception their team received as they switched sides before kick off will testify, we have missed them, as well, in a way. I only hope their substitutes and coaching staff realise this and have the good manners to return us the elastic bands that were playfully flicked in their direction as promptly as possible. And, as we’re friends, it was only natural they regressed to their normal behaviour when they’re with us and, as we’re Newcastle fans, it was highly amusing to remember that their normal behaviour when they’re with us is to be absolutely bloody awful.

Seriously. Sunderland came in to this game on the back of seven unbeaten games in a run that included Arsenal, Man Utd and Liverpool (the fixture list mixing it up and giving them a bit of an easy one there); they have, we were told by their fans, some good players, as one would hope they would do for the money they’ve spent. But they’re Sunderland, and we’re Newcastle United, and their belief in their team and the acknowledged weaknesses in our own was overpowered by these two simple truths. For all their bluster, they know and so do we. And that haunted look on Titus Bramble’s face as he got red carded, the one that seemed to flicker with just the briefest flick of recognition, that was because...well, that was because he always looks like that. But he probably knows it too.

Also, we have a better team. It’s easy to imagine that we wouldn’t, but I would take our centre backs over theirs, I would take Joey Barton over Jordan Henderson, Jonas and Malbranque are much of a muchness, Tiote will have Cattermole to play with, Carrol is better than Gyan and Kevin Nolan has now scored more goals this season from midfield than the amount of Sunderland fans that were left in the stadium to see his third one in this game. (Incidentally, any Sunderland complaints that they weren’t up for it on account of Henderson being the only Sunderland supporter in the team are surely tempered by the fact that this meant on ninety minutes that he was the only Sunderland supporter in the ground- their team weren’t the only spineless bottlers.) What’s that leave us? Bent? Yeah, we’ll have him- he could always get a run out in the cup games if he could learn to play in a team properly and not strop about the place looking like he’s forgotten his twitter password.

Their joy in the wake of our relegation? Premature. Their hubris about how much better they were than our collection of Championship plodders and has-beens? Misplaced. It was rubbed in their face in this game in the most sickening and unpalatable way imaginable- honestly, it must have been simply ghastly for them- and it’s tacky to gloat any further really. Some clubs make banners and hang them over the Tyne Bridge to demonstrate their joy in their rival’s failings, others prefer to do their talking on the pitch.

Still, nice to see they’re keeping well. If they ask, we’re busy right through until January. We can’t play them every week, more's the pity.