Perhaps in response to the recent skirmish at Newcastle Central Station, the latest anti-hooligan poster was tacked to walls around the ground on Wednesday night.

Depicting some casually-attired, likely-looking lads laying into each other in an alleyway, its punchline read, "This has nothing to do with football."

And in many ways that was an apt description of what the Newcastle players served up on the occasion of Sir Bobby's 200th match in charge of this club.

Due to the vagaries of TV scheduling, only those 37,000 Toon fans within SJP and exiles with access to Balkan satellite channels witnessed the awfulness of this performance.

And perhaps that's no bad thing, given the desperate two hours that was served up, which proved to be only the elongated warm-up to the epicentre of our underachievement - the hell on earth otherwise known as a penalty shootout.

In times to come, those go-ahead trendy institutions currently offering degree courses in REM B-sides or the cultural significance of Homer Simpson will doubtless add the subject of our perpetual failure from the spot to their syllabus. With perhaps an extra dentistry module tagged on to deal with all that gnashing and grinding of teeth.

As someone once said, it's like deja-vu all over again and while we have become well used to this method of losing over the last four decades, to have spurned two opportunities within a year to end this misery is just plain careless - and we're not referring to the Asia Cup farce of barely six weeks ago, otherwise it would be three.

However, to dwell on the conundrum of Shearer's opening penalty miss, Robert's bottling out of the contest by removing his boots or the fact we still managed to establish and blow a winning position after missing our first three efforts is to miss the point of the evening (as an aside though, I'd have paid money to get Stuart Pearce on that pitch at that moment and see his reaction to Robert's crass behaviour.)

The shootout is an artificial way to decide a game and as such has to be treated differently from the real match. Sir Bobby claimed the players regularly practice spot kicking and we have to believe him. Perhaps they should try practicing them at SJP though, in the dark, with a (supportive) crowd present.

No, the main problem of the evening was simply that in the previous two hours of the contest we were utterly awful. A team widely tipped by so-called experts to build on last season's European and domestic achievements collectively choked it in a manner that was scarcely believable even to those who witnessed it first-hand, never mind being reduced to forming opinions from radio stations and tuppenny ha'penny unofficial websites....

Saturday saw Manchester United secure the win here many predicted, if not with the emphatic scoreline that we feared. Tonight though, Partizan were merely workmanlike - had they been any better we'd not have been clarting on with silver goals and their small band of fans would have had an extra hour of celebratory pivo-quaffing in the Strawberry.
     
Every home outfield player on the field had a nightmare, none of them with the slightest hint of any form. And when even Woodgate toiled away to give an uncharacteristically error-strewn performance, we should have known that we were going to suffer.

Any semblance of ball control or finding colleagues with a pass was missing, while a total absence of movement into space or creativity from the midfield saw Hughes especially thrust into the ill-fitting role of playmaker time and again.
In common with the second half of Saturday this silenced the crowd, save for some late outbreaks of support breaking out as the contest entered overtime. 

Quite simply, there was nothing to cheer, no hint of better things to follow - just a continuing nightmare and the growing realisation that the visitors were rapidly cottoning on to the fact we were incapable of damaging them.

Inevitably there was also a sense of injustice, aided by the officials who indulged in some odd decisions, but for us to be relying on a lucky break or a favourable whistle sums up our current plight. Unpalatable it may be, but tonight's Dutch referee was no more to blame for our defeat than Rennie was last week.

There hardly seems any point in sifting through the wreckage of individual player displays, given the collective mess of a performance  that all the outfield players contributed to. But the fact our road to the free money of the Champs League has been blocked now apparently means that what we've got in terms of playing staff is all we're getting.

In other words, them that got us into this mess have to get us out. Dismiss fanciful notions about our big squad - in real terms we have a first team pool of around 15 outfield players from which to pick a starting side.

Don't believe me?

Take the squad list that fills the back of the programme. Delete the keepers. Delete the transfer listed players. Delete the on-loan players. Delete the youngsters given squad numbers. Delete the players who have fallen foul of the manager. What's left? About 15.

The paucity of choice was amply demonstrated by the fact that the two players who'd most recently incurred the wrath of Robson ended the game on the field - although the belated appearance of LuaLua was grudging in the extreme. Quite simply Sir Bobby has no other realistic options and the players know that.

There's too little competition for places: rotating three full backs round the two places doesn't appear to be helping any of them while the loss of Bellamy is affecting our attacking style to an alarming extent, our once-feared pace no longer evident and replaced by plodding forward movements.

Whether the early-season leaden footedness can be attributed to the Malaysian expedition remains to be seen as does the tabloid suggestion of warring factions in the dressing room.

And only time will tell whether our fiscal strategy is as prudent as has been claimed and we've avoided the trap Leeds (and others) fell into of spending money that was only notionally coming our way.

The unpalatable bottom line may well be that despite 50,000+ gates, we don't have the financial clout to compete at the level we're aiming at. On that basis, withholding transfer funds in pre-season could well be seen as an important decision. 

That's unless you're from the speculate to accumulate school of course....

This premature exit provides a sharp injection of reality and realisation that we remain also-rans as far as usurping the teams who finished ahead of us last time out. Knowing also that we may well have already seen the team at the limit of our potential last season is the most depressing thought though - it may get no better than that plateau, as other clubs mount more sustained challenges on the top two. If you're looking for parallels, how about Blackburn, who at least won a trophy before slipping back into the pack.....

Enough negativity: we're so grotesquely poor that we're doing ourselves (and the fans, coaching staff etc.) a disservice. That won't continue, but we as fans have to front it out and try to remain positive - moaning and wailing if Birmingham go ahead on Saturday won't help anyone, no matter how deserved scorn and derision from the stands may be. 

There doesn't appear to be a plan B, a pot of money, a magic wand or a Soviet Saviour waiting to return us to dreamland - cold hard reality has intervened and the price of failure is comparative austerity.

Just as we flirted with greatness last season both at home and abroad but were ultimately found out, so we're floundering so far this season. A place in three cup competitions is still ours though and there's still the matter of over 100 league points to play for.

Smiles back on faces at 5pm on Saturday are a pre-requisite, regardless of who wears the black and white shirts. No newspaper hand-ringing or apologies - actions on the pitch speak louder than words on Sky Sports.

PS: Shame about that now-unnecessary Champions League silver third strip though - will it now be launched in the club shop at midnight.... and at a reduced price?

PPS: spare a thought for the Sky techie who in the wee small hours of Thursday was busy editing out the "Shearer!" frame from the dreadful Elton John Champions League advert. If only we could mend things as easily....