Staring into abyss

FA Premiership/Newcastle Utd 0 Sheffield Utd 1: Where to begin? With Danny Webber's headed winner, with Scott Parker's alleged sarcastic gesture to Newcastle fans soon after, with the "Shepherd out" chants that followed, with Newcastle's decision to play the game less than 48 hours after being in Palermo, with the sponsors' public snub to Glenn Roeder?

Or do you, as so many of the Newcastle United faithful do, go back further, to May 2004 when the chairman, Freddy Shepherd, gun in hand and Bobby Robson in front of him, refrained from pulling the trigger. "I didn't want to be known as the man who shot Bambi," Shepherd would say.

Until then Shepherd was not considered sentimental. The trouble for him was that three months later, 24 hours before the closure of the August transfer window, Bambi had to be put down. The Hall family, the major shareholders, stood in the background and tut-tutted that it was too late.

Indeed, the timing was not clever. One delayed decision then begat a bad one: the appointment of Graeme Souness. That in turn begat more delay, because when Newcastle lost at Wigan in the fourth round of the League Cup last November, Souness's position was untenable. He staggered on until a dismal defeat at Manchester City on February 1st begat Roeder as caretaker.

Shepherd set off on a process to get Martin O'Neill but failed. Roeder, meanwhile, did well. But something seems to happen when a caretaker becomes the manager, and Webber's header, to many the culmination of 2½ years of downward spiral, means Newcastle have lost seven of 11 Premiership matches this season and are second-bottom.

Worryingly for Roeder, once Webber scored, Newcastle heads dropped. Goalkeeper Steve Harper had this to say: "We are lacking character and mental strength."

Not good, and all at St James's Park know relegation spells economic meltdown. Who would want to manage or play for Newcastle should they go down? Michael Owen? It could be Leeds United all over again.