Are Newcastle fans “too emotional”?

As Talksport, Sky and other mainstream media continue their ‘doom and gloom’ narrative on all-things Newcastle United, let’s discuss whether the fans have brought all this scrutiny on ourselves… simply for committing the crime of ‘caring too much’…

A line of prose that sticks with me about a character from one of my favourite novels is the following; ‘His heart has a draft. It lets in light. It lets in storms. It lets in everything.’* Quite fitting then, that as a supporter of Newcastle United, I do sometimes feel like this football club seems to break and mend and break my heart again and again on a season-by-season basis.

I do let everything in. And so does so many of this fanbase. We had grown men crying upon reaching the League Cup final in 2023. Just reaching it, not winning it. We had Amanda Staveley walking on water for brokering the deal that rid us of Mike Ashley. We had outrage at the behaviour of certain players that wanted to leave. We were ridiculed by the media and opposition fanbases every single time.

The quintessential British motto of ‘keep calm, carry on’ seems to have permeated into every aspect of British culture. Particularly football. You can’t celebrate too much, especially a ‘Mickey Mouse trophy’ like the League Cup. And you certainly can’t get upset when a star player leaves, not even one that refused to train, or one that said he wanted to go down in history as a Newcastle legend like Alan Shearer. 

There’s a stiff upper lip mindset and a level of detachment in British football fans that doesn’t seem to stretch far enough north to consume Newcastle fans. Whichever scouser claimed ‘This Means More’ had clearly never set foot on Tyneside. And scouse voices became the loudest of all when mocking the Carabao cup celebrations during the tug-of-war for Alexander Isak. Funny, that…

In the modern era of social media, starting trends, stretching truths, and spreading unnecessary hate has made football a very divisive and toxic place to be online. Just look at the state of modern football journalism with Fabrizio Romano. Modern football meme culture seems here to stay, and once these windup merchants see a snowball rolling and picking up more and more traction, it’s easy to jump aboard. 

Newcastle aren’t the only team getting rejected for players, but you’d think so from taking one look at Instagram. But it also gains traction because they know Newcastle fans will bite back, take things to heart, go out to bat for our club as it’s getting stripped away around us. Engagement is great for the ‘algorithm’ after all… especially if it garners rage-bait comments and sparks arguments back-and-forth. Spurs are memed as a club, but the fans don’t rise to it. Most of the banter about Spurs is about the club, the owners, the team. When Newcastle are bantered, it’s often the fanbase that is the target… ‘the insufferable , delusional Geordies’.

Maybe it was inevitable that I was always going to fall for Newcastle United through distant relatives as opposed to the Manchester clubs that were much nearer to my doorstep. Newcastle just gets under your skin. Football is a way of life up here. You can almost taste it in the air. Sir Bobby Robson said it best in his immortal ‘What is a club in any case?’ speech. And it says a lot about Robson that his respect, kindness and humility made him one of the few Geordie icons to avoid mockery from rival fans. Shearer got it for never winning medals up here. Keegan got it for his infamous “I would love it!” rant… which, if anything, was one of the last times a British football manager spoke like an impassioned human being during a live interview.

And King Kev brings us onto the summer that inspired this entire article. Or ‘ramble’ if you will. I have recently moved to Newcastle. I love it here. And when the tragic news of Keegan’s passing broke, it felt to me - as an adopted Geordie - as if visiting St James’ Park to pay my respects wasn’t just a mark of compassion, but a euphoric pilgrimage. The banners, flowers, photographs and replica shirts had been dropping for over a week when I went, yet people were bringing more and more, the crowd wasn’t thinning. Day and night, people of all ages were travelling to say their goodbyes to the man who touched the hearts of an entire city.

Another goodbye this summer has been Eddie Howe, who did something even King Kev could not; win a trophy. Many felt the time was right; that Eddie had given his all and it was an amicable parting of the ways. The goodbye video was still emotional and Eddie will always be a hero on Tyneside. But maybe that Tyneside spark of passion had finally been snuffed out. Despite the media’s best interests at spinning a chaotic narrative, the overwhelming response from Toon fans was; ‘thanks for what you’ve done here, but yes, now seems like the right time for fresh ideas’.

And lastly, and deservedly least in my eyes, captain Bruno Guimaraes has departed as well. There was emotion here, this was a man who went all-in on his ‘Mr Newcastle’ persona. His sons were ‘Geordies’, this was his ‘second home’… even his dad was a hero here. It would have made his actions a little more palatable (hiring the super agent to pull the strings from the shadows) if he hadn’t snuck into our sensitive hearts quite so effectively, but even now, there is a keenness among the fanbase to learn from the pain of Isak and move on swiftly. Lessons are being learned.

Sometimes I marvel at other fanbases, the incredibly measured and mature responses to cup wins, key departures and memorable matches. Every fan feels like their fanbase cares the most. But I must admit, the fanfare around that Carabao cup seemed to send shockwaves through the English football stratosphere much louder than Palace and Spurs’ long overdue cup wins the same year. Key players have left other clubs without the drama, hysteria and smoke and mirrors of Isak and Guimaraes. There always seems to be an extra dollop of drama when Newcastle United are involved… for better or worse.

And that brings us onto the final few weeks of this summer. Players have left, players have turned us down, managers have left, new managers have come in, and Talksport and Sky have been rubbing their hands together with glee. “Think of the meltdown on Tyneside!” And yes, it’s true. We were disappointed about Manzambi. We were gutted about Bruno. But we moved on fast. Too much has happened to leave so much emotional outpour on every piece of bad news. We’d have nothing left to give to the players that want to be here.

So now when I largely hear Newcastle fans on mainstream media saying things like ‘quietly confident’ ‘optimistic for the future’ and ‘excited for change’, I’m glad - not just because our fanbase deserved some positivity after the tumultuous past twelve months… but also because it isn’t giving the media the hysterical outburst they came to expect from us after #IsakGate or #Wembley2023.

Maybe we’re finally learning not to rise to the bait. But I certainly hope we never stop letting our club into hearts ‘like a draft’. It makes the good times even sweeter, and the sad times a little more poignant.

*For anyone interested the quote is from ‘The invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab