"Then you will get support from 52,000 fans. They do not want to see players playing poorly.

"We had a good performance from 11 individuals against Blackburn and did not deserve to lose.

"It keeps the bad run going and can eat away at your confidence. But my job is to make sure we maintain this kind of spirit and commitment, combined with our ability.

"That's what is needed if we are going to turn things around and get some points on the board.

"Joey (Barton) is a strong man with a strong opinion. He likes to say what he thinks - but some of the interview he did was shredded and taken out of context.

"Joey's commitment to Newcastle was there for the fans to see today. You could also see their commitment to him and the rest of the team."

This came in response to Barton's interview that appeared in Saturday's papers, when he spoke about his impressions of the Liverpool home game in particular and the Gallowgate fans in general:

"It was surreal. I don't think I have heard a crowd that vicious. I was sitting on the bench and after 20 minutes I had picked up on it. It was still 0-0 at that point. At half-time I was walking down the tunnel with Peter Crouch and he turned and said: 'I have never heard a crowd so vicious.' To be honest it shocked me."

"I can understand their frustration. I'm not saying it's not deserved, but we want them to stay with us.

"Unless it is addressed and we all get together as one and say: 'Well, we're not having the best time of it, but let's give my support to Newcastle United', then our next home game is against Arsenal and, if we are greeted by that sort of atmosphere, we will lose again.

"Unless they change that mentality and get with it, start supporting the side through poor results, then things won't change. It's the easiest thing in the world to be negative, but I would like them just to try to be positive, to say: 'Even if 51,999 are going to be negative, I will try to be positive.' If we can all be positive, before we know it we will turn it around.

"We want to earn the respect of the fans. If I had been watching the Liverpool game I would have been disappointed, but it's easy to be negative. As a club, as a city we have to try to be positive.

"If we can get the crowd behind us then it lifts the place – it almost becomes a 12th man. I have watched Liverpool and the Kop become a 12th man in the Champions League. That is what we need. The amount of people, with their passion, it can have a similar effect at Newcastle; if it doesn't, it's detrimental."

"People have talked about a fear factor up here and you sense it. The minute someone gives the ball away, or the minute someone does something wrong, or there's a backpass, they are greeted with disapproval and jeers. It's like England, the fear of failure. Without being unkind to them [the fans], the Keegan era is gone. In an ideal world we would be playing like that but this is not an ideal world. The squad is in transition, there's been injuries to players like myself.

"This is a high-pressure football club. I can only speak for myself and how I feel. I know there are others feeling it. You look at the calibre of players over the last 10 years since Keegan and there are a lot of good players – the Kluiverts, Jenases and Parkers – and this crowd has been vicious enough to eat players up. They are top, top players and they didn't do so well here. When you think about it, you can understand it. It's easy for someone to buckle in that kind of atmosphere."

"Negative breeds negative. Unless it is turned around here with some drastic change of thought, it's going to be the same here for this manager, the next manager and whoever comes in after that. Sam's a good manager and the players have to turn up on Saturday and do it, because he is getting the brunt of the criticism. It should be the players. He doesn't deserve it.

"This is a time for coming together and seeing who the men are amongst us. If we don't, this club will be in big trouble. It's trench warfare, if you sit there in the trench you will be bombarded and overrun. I will go to war with them [Blackburn]. It's not about passing the ball around and being nice. It's about going to Blackburn – one of the best teams in this league, one of the best units – and overcoming them. It's not the time to shirk responsibility. As the manager said this week, anyone who doesn't fancy it: leave."

As far as we're concerned, this is the right sentiment at the right time but coming from the wrong player - it's an unpalatable truth and he deserves recognition for breaking ranks from the age-old "great fans" script that is trotted out time and time again by current and former Magpies.

However, Joey Barton hasn't actually done anything for this club yet which somewhat undermines his rant - and gives a get-out clause to people who didn't want him in a black and white shirt to disregard his pertinent comments.

Had those same sentiments been expressed by Shay Given for example, they would have been more difficult to be ignored than from someone who has played six games for us  - but maybe a fresh pair of eyes is a better judge of what we accept as reality round these parts.

Barton is a little off-beam in his specific gripes about the Kluivert, Jenas and Parker departures; especially in the case of the sulky Dutchman who received far more support than he ever deserved from Newcastle fans and went on to similarly abuse the benevolence of both Valencia and PSV diehards. 

However the overall tone of the article matches our current despair over some of our fans - we have lost at Ewood, but the defiant mood of the support was genuinely uplifting.

Let's hope the message gets through when we return to home ground on Wednesday and Saturday.