Bobby Robson has described managing Newcastle United as a dream come true. The significance of that statement would appear to depend on what sort of dreams he has been having lately.

Robson is being widely touted as the latest manager-designate of a club who in the space of 32 months have seen off three of the most successful men in modern football: Kevin Keegan, Kenny Dalglish and now Ruud Gullit.

Keegan was forced out by the club's plc prospectus, the manner of Dalglish's going has yet to be thrashed out by the lawyers, and Gullit, with startling lack of originality, has blamed press harassment.

Newcastle, meanwhile, have continued to plot a course with all the navigational skills of the good ship Venus. When Keegan left they lay fourth and had just thrashed Tottenham 7-1. Since then they have achieved consistency of a kind by finishing 13th in the past two seasons while flopping at Wembley in successive FA Cup finals.

This has been accompanied by the spending of just over Stg£65 million on new players by Dalglish and Gullit to add to the £59 million spent during Keegan's five years.

At least Keegan bought Alan Shearer. Dalglish's biggest buy was Gary Speed, not exactly a snip at £5.5 million, and under Gullit Newcastle laid out £8 million on Duncan Ferguson, whose "dream team" partnership with Shearer has yet to produce a respectable snore.

By and large Keegan's signings improved the squad. Dalglish and Gullit, on the other hand, tended to spend millions on inferior players, thus Newcastle's current low position.

Given time Robson might be able to sort out the mess. Having coached PSV Eindhoven, Sporting Lisbon, Porto and Barcelona he must be well versed in the ways of multinational dressing-rooms and was sorting out the awkward squad from his early days at Ipswich. And at 66 he is unlikely to resort to fisticuffs, as he did with Bill Baxter, the leading recalcitrant at Portman Road.

Strictly speaking Robson, born at Langley Park near Durham, is not a Geordie but he is close enough in spirit. Gullit, with his complaints about a lack of privacy, does not seem to have realised what Newcastle are about.

They are a club with a big past struggling to recreate greatness without really knowing how. Their best years in the league were under Edward VII, in the FA Cup under Churchill. With a manager of Robson's calibre they might learn at last that there is more to success than appointing a famous name and spending a lot of money.

Whoever takes over will surely need time more than money to make sense of the bilious tower of Babel left by Gullit. During his 13 years at Ipswich Robson rejected numerous approaches to manage bigger clubs because he prized the fact that he was working for a settled board.

Gullit never seemed to understand the passion for the team that seethes through the city. Whatever support he had enjoyed among the supporters began to dwindle fast once he benched Shearer against Sunderland.

Now Shearer could become the focal point of the fans' displeasure if his form does not improve and his on-field body language does not place less emphasis on the first person singular.

On Tyneside it is time to face reality. At the moment Newcastle United are not a big club. They are just a big idea.