Newcastle United fans and stereotyping – You have to laugh…

There have been some classics aimed at Newcastle United fans over the years.

Stereotyping at its best (worst!).

Patronising, condescending…at best.

However, in reality, invariably there would be malice at the heart of it.

Whenever these outsiders / enemies would be grouping Newcastle United fans together, as a mass of people supposedly all sharing the same (not good!!!) view / characteristic.

Newcastle United fans we were told, preferred to lose 4-3 than win 1-0.

This kind of laughable nonsense often be sparked by woeful rubbish managers such as Sam Allardyce, to try and make out that we were clueless about the realities of football and how to succeed. The real big laugh about this of course is that the likes of Allardyce didn’t supply boring 1-0 winning football, instead it was boring losing 1-0 (or worse) losing football.

The truth is that this all could be sourced back to the Kevin Keegan era, these negative references, these same enemies wanting to portray KK as a loser at Newcastle United. Reality of course is that he delivered entertaining AND winning football, that took NUFC from the brink of the third tier to a whisker away from winning the Premier League in only four years.

If only he’d defended a bit more then Newcastle United would definitely have won trophies, the logic went. Yes, that is how easy it is. Reality, is that Kevin Keegan getting his team to defend more, would have simply meant them attacking less, not playing to his / their strengths.

As for chancers such as Graeme Souness, Sam Allardyce and others, who try and use Kevin Keegan as some kind of negative to excuse their own serious shortcomings when at St James’ Park…simply embarrassing.

How ironic was it that then in later years, Newcastle United fans were then challenged / ridiculed for overwhelmingly accepting Rafa’s largely not super exciting football. The thing is, Newcastle supporters understood just how badly Benitez had been undermined by Mike Ashley, they understood that Rafa had to come up with a plan to try and keep the club in the Premier League, when Ashley refused to allow any kind of proper investment in the squad after promotion. Having to rely on signing a £5m Stoke reserve striker to lead the line was never going to equal the most exciting football ever seen on Tyneside.

Maybe the most famous / infamous stereotyping of Newcastle United fans though, was sparked by the ‘Cockney Mafia OUT!’ banner that appeared at St James’ Park.

To the dullards in the media and punditry, this was apparently simply a reminder of how much Newcastle United fans supposedly hated everything south of (anywhere outside of) Tyneside, especially if they came from London / the south.

Our enemies desperate to portray Newcastle United fans as insular ignorant fools who only loved their own. Village idiots but on a slightly bigger scale.

The truth of course was, the ‘Cockney Mafia OUT!’ referred very specifically to Mike Ashley and his loyal cronies. The ‘Cockney’ reference was simply shorthand to refer to the likes of Mike Ashley, Dennis Wise, Derek Llambias, Keith Bishop, Justin Barnes and so on. Characters who were all involved in some part, in the way that Newcastle United was been operated as a football club in that dismal era.

The fact that countless cockneys / outsiders were willing to go public and state that the above was true, made no difference. Indeed, somehow the words of the likes of Sir Les Ferdinand, Rob Lee, Warren Barton and many other notable past NUFC figures, were then used to add more fuel to the fire, when it came to ridiculing Newcastle United fans. I suppose it was kind of a case that these ex-Newcastle United players were supposedly the exceptions that proved the rule.

Which brings us to the present day…

Newcastle United people in September 2022

Chairman

Yasir Al-Rumayyan – Saudi Arabia

Directors

Jamie Reuben – London

Amanda Staveley – Ripon (North Yorkshire)

Majed Al Sorour – Saudi Arabia

CEO

Darren Eales – Chelmsford (Essex)

Sporting Director

Dan Ashworth – London

Team management

Eddie Howe – Amersham (Buckinghamshire)

Jason Tindall – London

Players (most fans’ first eleven)

Pope – Soham (Cambridgeshire)

Trippier – Bury

Schar – Switerland

Botman – Holland

Targett – Eastleigh (Hampshire)

Shelvey – Romford

Bruno – Brazil

Joelinton -Brazil

Isak – Sweden

ASM – France

Wilson – Coventry

Owners, club executives, team management, first choice eleven…not a Geordie amongst them. Almost like it…doesn’t really matter.

When I say it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t. However, at the same time, obviously it will be a massive bonus if say local lad Elliot Anderson comes through, whilst the likes of Dan Burn, Sean Longstaff and Paul Dummett also give us that little bit of extra local connection. It isn’t essential though and certainly doesn’t make it begrudging that we have to put up with the likes of Bruno and Joelinton, or any of the others named above from overseas and around the UK.

The final laugh of course is that Newcastle United fans were then ridiculed for not getting behind ‘one of our own’ when Steve Bruce was in the NUFC hotseat.

So we had gone from having been attacked for supposedly hating all outsiders, especially those from the south, to now being attacked for not automatically supporting and believing in ‘True Geordie’ Steve Bruce…

Amazingly, the actual truth is that as Newcastle United fans, we love / respect anybody who comes to our football club and treats it right.

Anybody that comes to St James’ Park and genuinely wants to try and make Newcastle United be the best it can be.