The Toon Army may be ready to disband

English FA Premiership: It is 50 years since Newcastle won a major trophy. Signs are the fans are for turning, writes Michael Walker

To borrow a phrase, Newcastle United are the football club that would give an aspirin headaches. Graeme Souness has come to discover this in his 97 days at St James' Park, and the dull ache he is experiencing now may yet become a fully blown migraine.

Souness takes Newcastle to two of his former clubs in the next eight days - Liverpool tomorrow and Blackburn Rovers on St Stephen's Day - and, with Arsenal at home on December 28th, there is a depressing expectation on Tyneside that the new year will be ushered in with both a hangover and Newcastle in the bottom six or seven in the Premiership.

Souness and the hierarchy at St James' Park would doubtless see that as symbolising the "negativity" regarding the club that has come to disturb him. Privately he is said to be both dismayed and alarmed by the degree of pessimism, but then he has not been long on Tyneside. It is long enough, though, to see his side booed off twice in the past week.

Those optimistic days under Kevin Keegan and a couple of Bobby Robson's campaigns have been trodden underfoot by the relentless march of Newcastle's epic under-achievement.

This may be season one for Souness at Newcastle but it is season 50 for fans without a major domestic trophy to celebrate, and the signs are starting to show those fans are for turning. As Michael Martin of the True Faith fanzine said: "Souness may well have walked into a firestorm here. It is not his fault, though people are increasingly looking at his past and what he has achieved as a manager.

"The current disaffection is because of the accumulation over years of the bond scheme, the platinum club, shunting fans around the ground, the price of season tickets - the highest of any club outside London - the dividends paid to major shareholders. A lot of us now are cynical and, when (the chairman) Freddy Shepherd makes the statements he is alleged to have made in Dubai about not needing lower clubs like Wrexham, it makes us uncomfortable."

How representative this feeling is and how it develops is interesting: will this latent resentment mutate into action or uninterest? Colin Whittle, who as the chair of the Save Our Seats campaign was one of the six fans taken to court in 2000 by the club he supports, said such is the disillusion "you could see a day where we're only getting 40,000 at home games.

"I think it inevitable that there'll be a drop-off in season tickets if this continues, and I don't think those in charge have planned for that day. They all think they'll get 52,000 always. I'm 42 and in my lifetime I can't see us ever winning a trophy. We'll never win the league, I'm resigned to that and the pain is less. We might win a cup, but I'm not optimistic."

It is not just a run of one win in seven league games, nor the fact Newcastle have not beaten any of the Premiership's present top 10 this season that gnaws. It is, as both Martin and Whittle said, the accumulation of grievances.

Both added that there has never been such a disconnection between Newcastle's supporters and players.

The salaries and dividends Shepherd and Douglas Hall receive - £4 million combined last year - also annoy, and yet, while Shepherd is derided nationally, locally Whittle said there is "grudging respect".

Martin added: "The previous board were worse. At least Shepherd and the Halls have shown ambition. But they have not made one right decision in the past 18 months."

The timing of Robson's dismissal is the chief gripe this season. "Two clubs who finished above us, Chelsea and Liverpool, were ruthless enough to sack their managers in the summer," said Whittle. "Not us."

That in turn heralded Souness in September. In June it would have been someone else.

But Souness it was: a man who just last month said Newcastle were "a cat's whiskers away" from being a team that could challenge. By last Wednesday he said of his squad: "That's what I inherited. I haven't woken up to that this morning. If the squad was good enough, the previous manager would still be here."

It was the first time Souness had publicly pointed out the obvious, but he has been aware of the manic Geordie gaze since the day he walked in. "I was informed that's the way it is here," Souness said. "There is a great thirst for knowledge."

There is, and statistics like Souness never having won at Anfield as an opposing manager will be devoured.

"Monster" was how Souness described the game.