Let's face it, Toon halfwits deserve the drop under smug Alan Shearer

Matthew Norman
22.05.09

And so it ends, to adapt TS Eliot, not with a bang but a couple of whimpers. There will be no pyrotechnics to mark the end of another Premier League that fizzed and sparked for a while but never quite caught fire.

Here in London, what last-day interest there is concerns whether Fulham or Spurs will finish seventh to reach the Europa League. I hope and expect it will be Fulham. Their progression under Roy Hodgson has been dazzling thanks to home form every bit as good as Chelsea's and Liverpool's.

Assuming it holds up against Everton - a gimme with the Scousers six days from an FA Cup Final - that doyen of stadium MCs 'Diddy' David Hamilton will announce the club's first proper qualification for Europe (the other coming via the Intertoto Cup) as the Sabbath dusk begins to fall over the Thames. And even if it deserts them, Tottenham must win at Liverpool.

If by some miracle they do (Spurs' last League win at a Big Four ground was halfway through the reign of Queen Anne), Chelsea would pip Liverpool to the runners-up spot with a thumping win at Sunderland. This couldn't matter less to Chelsea, whose thoughts will be on Guus Hiddink's Cup final send- off, because the difference between second and third is approximately zero. But to Sunderland and the other four clubs scrapping to stay up, it will be crucial. In fact, every ounce of excitement on Sunday will involve the north-east, into which Hull fall for the sake of this column, with all four clubs from the region certain to fill the two vacant relegation slots.

One of them, touch wood, will belong to Newcastle, who will go down if they lose at Villa Park. If so, no club in memory will have done more to deserve demotion because Mike Ashley's appointment, if not anointment, of Alan Shearer was the most foolish hiring since, erm well, ever.

Caligula's horse isn't in it. Incitatus did fine as Consul of Rome, claiming expenses only for his oats, a ceremonial bridle, and two horseshoes.

What a relegation-threatened club need isn't a lucky horseshoe or a manic last throw of the dice but a manager with experience. This is why Chairman Mo hired Hodgson when Fulham appeared doomed last season and why Blackburn replaced the bamboozled Paul Ince with Sam Allardyce in December. Even Daniel Levy had the wit to hire canny, wily Harry Redknapp when Spurs were rock bottom in October.

Entrusting Newcastle's survival to a thick, smug ingenue was a work of mesmerising imbecility. There must have been a dozen of out-of-work managers who would comfortably have rescued Newcastle but Ashley chose instead to suck up to the bare-chested fan base by giving them exactly what they wanted. Would you be guided in such a vital decision by 30,000 halfwits whose idea of merriment is taking their shirts off in mid-February?

This was no time for a novice, as someone once said, and if on Sunday Shearer becomes the classic tragic hero by being undone by the fatal flaw he couldn't see in himself (not having the first clue how to manage a football team) it will be comedy gold.

As for Hull City, whose Premier League debut took off vertically before going into a corkscrew spin, they entertain Manchester United. It seems Sir Alex Ferguson may now field a few first-team regulars after all, despite the imminence of the Champions League Final, out of respect for Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough, if not to avoid a massive fine. Were John Prescott a Hull fan, we would of course want them down. But the Aphasic Mouth of the Humber prefers such ancient proletarian sport as croquet, lavatory seat breaking and the mock tudor beam arranging, so we don't. Anyway, the memory of Geovanni's astounding strike in Hull's 2-1 win at Arsenal is still fresh enough for us to wish them well.

However Sunday unfolds, it will end with Sky broadcasting the usual pictures of the deliriously relieved in celebration and of grown men posing for the cameras by blubbing like queens at a Judy Garland tribute and no doubt Richard Keys will remind us that this is the Best League In The World. Perhaps perhaps he's right, although I wonder whether he'd have second thoughts about were he switched to anchor Sky's coverage of La Liga, but it's certainly the world's most predictable.

Handed a pen and sheet of A4 in August, you'd have come remarkably close to predicting the table as it will look on Sunday evening. Most of us wouldn't have put Fulham so high or Newcastle so low and we'd probably have sent Stoke City back to the Championship. Otherwise, not the tiniest surprise. So let the hypemongers bang on about the Premier League's global supremacy if they must. The day we start whimpering with boredom won't be forever delayed.