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Vilified Toon Army deserved rare joy in Arsenal comeback

Newcastle's extraordinary fightback from 4-0 down was a moment to savour for long-suffering Newcastle fans


Newcastle fans Newcastle United fans are insatiable in their appetite for success but in over half a century the team have won only the Fairs Cup.
Members of the Toon Army have had a terrible press over the years. Certainly in the Premier League era, Newcastle United supporters have been variously portrayed as gullible, overemotional, unrealistic, absurdly optimistic, sentimentally attached to self-appointed messiah figures who inevitably come up short and, most famously of all, prone to bursting into tears when defeat has once again been snatched from the jaws of victory.

In his book 50 People Who Fouled Up Football, Michael Henderson devotes a chapter to the "Geordie Blubber", evoking the image of a grown man weeping like a baby that television cameras were quick to capture for posterity and fix in the national psyche. Henderson accuses Geordies of emotional incontinence and refers to them as our "tear-stained friends in the north", though he does acknowledge that the club has been badly run in recent years and anyone with a real passion for football would have been driven to distraction, at the very least, by the catalogue of blunders and public relations disasters.

Most people feel the same way about Geordie fans. Their enthusiasm and loyalty cannot be faulted, yet they seem destined to end up with the raw deal, the ignominious defeat, the mucky end of the stick. Newcastle made it to two successive FA Cup finals at the end of the 90s and sank without trace each time. Though the team managed by Kevin Keegan in the mid-90s would have graced Wembley and given anyone a game, the sides taken to the final by Kenny Dalglish and Ruud Gullit were pale shadows compared to what had gone before and offered Arsenal and Manchester United even less resistance than Joe Harvey's players put up against Liverpool in 1974. Had Newcastle won the 1999 final they would have denied Manchester United the treble, something that might have brought even greater satisfaction than a first major trophy for 44 years (the FA Cup still felt like a major trophy 12 years ago – Manchester United had yet to withdraw from the competition and Champions League clubs had not begun to insult the competition with teams of reserves) but predictably they sank without trace. Many neutrals find it difficult to recall who were Manchester United's Wembley opponents in that treble-winning year – the match that is fixed more permanently in the memory is the epic semi-final against Arsenal, complete with replay and stunning Ryan Giggs goal. That's Newcastle's luck all over. Get to Wembley to face Manchester United in a final and everyone remembers the semi instead.

No one would begrudge Tyneside the success its insatiable appetite for football deserves, but whereas passionate supporters in other hotbeds of the game such as Liverpool and Manchester, perhaps even London, have had plenty to cheer about in recent decades, it is over half a century since Newcastle won anything other than the Fairs Cup, so no one under the age of about 70 can have any idea what a satisfied, contented, deliriously happy Geordie fan looks like. That's partly why the cameras linger so lovingly on the disappointment and pain. That's what Geordies do best, having little option to do anything else. Dozens of other clubs have won as little in the past 50 years, but Newcastle are the club who think big, who occasionally crack the Champions League or mount a credible title challenge, only to end up heartbroken.

In his chapter on "Geordie Blubber", Henderson makes the contentious statement that the club's fans, the Toon Army, are part of the Newcastle problem. Their expectations are so great, he argues, they are impossible to fulfil. I'm not so sure about that. You could say the same thing about Liverpool fans, for instance, but it has not been a barrier to silverware in most seasons. There may be a grain of truth in the general assumption that Newcastle fans want José Mourinho as their manager and would dearly love to win the title and give Barcelona another pasting in Europe, preferably in the next year or so, but in the meantime the majority of them would settle for much more achievable goals. A settled team, for example, an old-fashioned, home-grown centre-forward who sticks around for a season or two before the owners decide to cash in, a manager given time and support to build the side back into top-half-of-the-table material. Though there have been times, notably under Keegan and Bobby Robson, when these conditions were at least partly fulfilled and Newcastle were a force to be reckoned with, the club has too often been a laughing stock in recent years, a soap opera bordering on farce, and supporters must have been wondering when they were going to get a break.

They got one on Saturday against Arsenal, and although a point saved against overwhelming odds might not amount to very much in the wider scheme of things, it made an extremely pleasant change to see images going around the world of Geordie supporters doing what they do best. Not crying, or moaning or hanging their heads, but helping turn around a seemingly lost cause by the volume and fervour of their support. Yes, I am aware that a few left the ground at half-time, unable to stomach any more. There have been people admitting as much in newspapers, and driving home from the north-east listening to the excellent Beat Surrender on Radio Newcastle (as I always do) there were requests from fans wanting to be cheered up because they had left the ground early and missed the most sensational action of the season.

The early leavers could only have been a minority though. There were no discernible gaps on the terraces for the second half and no lack of vocal support once the home side began to claw their way back into the game. Nor should leaving early necessarily be construed as a protest or an attempt to register disgust. Sometimes it can be that way but often, when confronted by opponents so superior and quicker in thought and deed, it can hurt to watch one's own team being taken apart so brutally. As Joey Barton said with his usual frankness, at the end of the first half Newcastle were worried the score might reach double figures, and though the players deserve enormous credit for turning the situation around one could sympathise with supporters who reckoned they had seen enough. The game brought back memories of Liverpool's improbable comeback in the 2005 Champions League final in Istanbul. Then, too, fans tried to leave at half-time, not so much depressed by their own team's performance as unwilling to confront the fact that Milan had taken just a few minutes to crush their dreams, only to find the stadium exits locked. You will probably never get a Liverpool fan to admit this, but some were unwilling witnesses to the second half fightback and the whole miracle of Istanbul.

Perhaps any team in Newcastle's position at half-time on Saturday could have expected similar support once it was clear the second half would tell a different story, but what impressed at St James' Park was the din created once the first goal went in. There were still three more to score, not counting the one that was wrongly disallowed, yet from the moment the fightback began the home crowd kept up a perfect storm of noise. Arsène Wenger admitted his players had panicked, and the extraordinary atmosphere must have been one of the reasons why. Arsenal could not break out of their own half, the decibel level kept rising, and at some point in the second half everyone in the stadium knew that Newcastle would get back on terms. Including all the players. Even so, Cheik Tioté's screamer of an equaliser produced one of the most joyous moments of this or any other Premier League season. It is difficult to jump for joy in a modern, all-seat stadium, but the Newcastle crowd managed it easily. There were people leaping into each other's arms, holding on to neighbours and chair backs for support and bouncing off the ground. It was quite something, a privilege to be present.

So take enormous credit, Newcastle fans, after all that you have suffered you truly deserve it. And when you finally win something big, shiny and silver, I'd love to be there to see it.