Something doesn't feel right at St James'...

With little football on offer at the moment, apart from international rubbish that doesn't even remotely interest me anymore, there is a tendency to look at any bits of news and over-analyse them.

This is brought about mainly by the fact that there is no domestic football to feed our NUFC habit and in a desperate attempt to get our Toon fix we tend to look a bit deeper into things than we would do usually. What's that? You don't? Well maybe it's just me then, and maybe it's why my overactive imagination has spawned this article.

You see there is a bit of a negative feel around the club at the moment, which has been brought about by the last two negative results, especially the Stoke one. Talk of Europe and top ten finishes has been replaced with talk of relegation and even prophecies of doom regarding the future of Alan Pardew have begun to surface after only fifteen or so league games in charge of NUFC.

Now I'm not buying into that and I feel that the 'one win in ten' stat that is being thrown around at the moment isn't a true reflection of the results. You could just as easily turn it round and say that we have only lost four games out of the last ten, which is the problem with stats - they can be read in many different ways to suit a particular argument.

Whilst I'm not jumping onto the 'pressure on Pardew' bandwagon I do have a feeling that something isn't quite right behind the scenes at St James' Park. Now I'm not overly au fait with matters of a behind the scenes nature at Newcastle, but to me something just doesn't seem right. Don't ask me what because I just don't know what it could be, but call it a gut feeling if you like.

Perhaps it is a confidence issue? Maybe the players are starting to feel the heat a little bit, but I just don't see the smiles on their faces that I happened to see even as recent as four games ago. The team spirit may remain intact, but it's being well hidden at the minute.

It's that team spirit that has to remain intact if we are to dodge the relegation bullet as it's the one defining quality that this team has over the team of two years ago. On paper that team should never have suffered a relegation, but the problem is that a game of football isn't played on paper. On the pitch, where it counts, that relegation side had no heart and spirit. This team does, or did.

It just hope it doesn't go missing at this crucial time of the season.