Newcastle raise the white flag

Manchester Utd 6 Newcastle Utd 0:As humiliations go, Alex Ferguson's men have dealt out worse beatings in their time but perhaps never one with such brutal, methodical ruthlessness and a more callous sense of timing.

Old Trafford is a formidable place for the most intrepid travellers, never mind a side of Newcastle United's callow nerve and the upshot, once again, is that the team in black and white is living out football's equivalent of being tarred and feathered and left by the roadside.

The capitulation was so extreme, so utterly vapid, that a proud football man such as Nigel Pearson could barely muster eye contact when he talked of "everything going wrong that could go wrong".

Pearson is deputising for Sam Allardyce at a point of the soap opera when Newcastle are not just managerless and rudderless but utterly joyless. He took an age before he reached the interview room and slumped into his chair with his head bowed.

"Can we make this as pain-free as possible?" were the first words of a man who had just seen his team let in six second-half goals in the manner of a junior school eight-a-side competition.

The ludicrous thing was that Newcastle, without a hint of exaggeration, were mightily fortunate that Manchester United stopped at six and, in particular, that Wayne Rooney was so obsessed in delivering the watching Fabio Capello the perfect goal he found his true level only after some scorching words from Ferguson at half-time.

Sadly for Newcastle, Rooney's colleagues were not so charitable and it needed just about every part of Shay Given's anatomy to prevent the team suffering the kind of ignominy that would have had statisticians flicking through the record books.

Rooney alone could, perhaps should, have taken the score into double figures. Add to that, three reasonable penalty claims plus all the goal-line clearances and, ridiculous as it sounds, those Newcastle supporters who watched through the latticework of their fingers may come to think they got off pretty lightly.

True, there are Geordies who will cite the bewildering award of the free-kick from which Cristiano Ronaldo began the rout by firing beneath the wall a la Ronaldinho. There was also a plausible argument that Carlos Tevez's volley did not cross the goal-line for the final indignity and, if they wanted to prolong the argument, Newcastle's followers could argue their team might actually have won had a trigger-happy linesman not denied Michael Owen a run at goal in the first half.

It would be baloney, of course, but there is a lot of that at Newcastle these days and at least Pearson had enough credibility not to go in search of excuses.

Enjoying the view from the top of the league, Ferguson almost ran the pot of superlatives dry although it was difficult at times to know whether the home side's biggest win of the season owed more to their own dazzling brilliance or Newcastle's blundering cackhandedness.

The truth is probably somewhere in between, one piece of action summing up the imbalance of talent when Charles N'Zogbia carelessly lost the ball in midfield. Three passes later, starting as it often did via the superb Michael Carrick, Ronaldo was in to make it 3-0. It was slick and stylish and, for Newcastle, the ordeal would get only worse.

By then, Given had spoiled his performance by booting a clearance against his team-mate Jose Enrique, allowing Ryan Giggs to set up Tevez's first of the day.

The white flag came up and Newcastle's afternoon became an exercise in damage limitation, one in which almost everyone bar Given and Steven Taylor downed tools. Rooney's exquisite pass set up Rio Ferdinand to make it 4-0.

Ronaldo, just one shy of the 23 goals he managed last season, concluded his hat-trick with a shot that deflected in off Enrique and when Tevez's volley came down off the underside of the crossbar Old Trafford had witnessed four goals at an average of one every two-and-a-half minutes.

To cap a thoroughly chastening experience for Newcastle, Alan Smith was so aggrieved at the Tevez goal that he got a red card for abusing the referee Rob Styles. Since returning from a broken leg, Smith has been a Championship striker masquerading as a Premier League midfielder but he has evidently not lost the brat tendencies that have pockmarked his career under the tedious guise of being "fully committed".

Smith will miss Wednesday's FA Cup third-round replay but with morale so low Stoke City must fancy their chances of condemning their hosts to the ritual of another season without silverware. Sadly for Newcastle, there are no trophies for the team with the most supporters willing to bare their torsos in January.