Toon Army

The goings-on at Newcastle are, I have no doubt, worrying for the fans but very interesting for those of us looking in from the outside. It seems to embody a struggle to maintain the connection of the club to its locality - the main complaint against the owner seems to be that he and the Director of Football he appointed are Londoners. It's certainly true that there aren't too many of the top clubs which have this connection these days, and indeed many of them are going to great lengths to widen their fan base as far as possible. There's a fair chance for example that a majority of Man U fans couldn't find Manchester on the map! Whether you can really maintain this insular approach to running a club with pretensions to being in the top flight is problematical, and it has been suggested that the club's greatest liability is in fact their fans and their demand that the management of the club must stay in local hands. Keegan's walked away (again!) and Shearer doesn't want it, so where do they go from there. Football isn't what it was, and that's a shame, but it's a reality we all have to accept.