Slippery slope to the exit door

Marseille likes to bill itself ‘a shock as much as a city”, but it was the predictability of Newcastle United’s defeat in the Stade Velodrome in the Uefa Cup semifinal second leg on May 6 — and the shocking reaction it provoked from fans — that ultimately resulted in Sir Bobby Robson reaching a dead end on Tyneside on Monday morning.

Newcastle went into that match level after a goalless first leg at St James’s Park. But two goals from Chelsea-bound Didier Drogba ensured they progressed no further. Without the injured Jonathan Woodgate for the return, once again they defended questionably.

No surprise there. But it was when the players, management and directors encountered Newcastle fans afterwards that the shocks started coming. The sheer hostility of supporters towards all at United genuinely startled key decision-makers. Mentally something had changed that night.

In the dressing room, it was no less fraught. Robson previously had difficulty dealing with the backchat of Kieron Dyer, Craig Bellamy and others; soon it would get worse.

But first Newcastle had three Premiership games when they returned from Marseille. They could still make the Champions League if all were won. They won none, even drawing with Wolves at home.

So the Champions League was gone, for a second season in a row. The previous year, Newcastle had botched their qualifier against Partizan Belgrade and found themselves dumped in Europe’s secondary club competition. If Marseille was a crossroads for Robson and Newcastle, Partizan was the first step down the road.

Alan Shearer, of all people, missed a penalty that night. His personal situation had been clouded by the knowledge that Robson had contemplated selling him to Liverpool that off-season; their relationship never fully recovered.

Robson must have reflected upon the Shearer penalty every time the Partizan game was mentioned. And it was mentioned a lot. After a club then without a trophy for 34 years were knocked out at home by West Brom in the League Cup — Shearer on the bench — it was heard.

After the tame fourth-round FA Cup defeat at Liverpool it was heard. After every failure to win away from home in the Premiership — and there were 17 of those — it was heard.

The chairperson Freddy Shepherd felt compelled to speak out after Christmas about players earning ‘Rolls-Royce wages” but not delivering. Newcastle had just drawn 1-1 at Leicester City thanks to a 90th-minute equaliser.

Robson did not like Shepherd’s outbursts. He felt it was his job to maintain discipline. But Shepherd was aware of the sort of training-ground disruption that would culminate in a public fracas between Bellamy and the first-team coach John Carver at Newcastle airport.

If that was embarrassing, accusations linking some Newcastle players to an incident at the Grosvenor House hotel after the team lost to Arsenal last September did not do the club any favours, even though no charges were ever brought.

And there were other incidents. Yet often Robson seemed most concerned about stories about the club getting out.

‘Who’s the cuckoo?” he would ask the local press. By the opening game of this season at Middlesbrough, he was asking: ‘Is there a conspiracy?”

To him it probably seemed that way. Players such as Nicky Butt and Patrick Kluivert, whom he said privately he did not want, arrived anyway. Shepherd was doing the buying now and Robson would refer quietly to Paul Stretford — Shepherd’s associate and agent to Wayne Rooney — as ‘Newcastle’s chief scout”.

In public, though, Robson persevered with the idea that he bought Kluivert and Butt. He is a good actor but when, 30 days ago, Shepherd said ‘No” — in public — to the possibility of Robson staying beyond May, he was flummoxed. He already knew but now everyone knew. He could not sustain the act.

Shepherd admitted this week he delayed dropping the axes because he ‘didn’t want to be known as the man who shot Bambi”.

Those 30 days would have been eventful even without that destabilising background. Stephen Carr, Woodgate, Dyer (pre- and post-apology) and Rooney are just a few of the players bought, sold or talked about. There were also four games — two drawn, at Boro and home to Norwich; two lost, at home to Spurs and at Aston Villa.

Saturday at Villa was to be Robson’s 255th and last as Newcastle manager. Dramatically, his final act was to drop Shearer, just as his predecessor Ruud Gullit had done. That precipitated Gullit’s downfall. But not Robson’s. His began quite some time ago. —