If you are trying to build a strong team spirit, full of players from all over the world, Joey Barton with his history of assaults on his own team mates (black and white), never mind the opposition, would not be top of my wish-list. Which reasonably good player would want Barton as a team-mate? He is certainly not flavour of the month with the England squad.

Allardyce has been able to revive the flagging or troubled careers of guys like Nicolas Anelka, Youri Djorkaeff, Ivan Campo, Fernando Hierro, Jay-Jay Okocha and Fredi Bobic but those guys were seveal leagues above Barton in class and temperament. Barton is a serious liability.

Our current squad, with players like emre, milner, owen etc is built to play passing football, not to pump long balls into the box all day. However I think that allardyce will do well enough to be given the time to build a squad to play that way. But that way can never get us into the champions league, so in 5 or however many years when the board gets impatient because we aren’t progressing towards champions league football and they fire allardyce, we will have to go through another long rebuilding process, as his team won’t be able to play good football (look at what happened to sammy lee and bolton when they tried to play decent football with the team big sam constructed).

Big Sam has done excellent work in the transfer market and can achieve our short term goals but I think he will be destructive to the long term goals of the club unless he changes his ways and stops playing long ball football.

Allardyce can make Newcastle a top six or top seven side. To displace Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea or Arsenal from the top four spots will be a very, very tough call, whether you are Martin O’Neill, Sven Goran Ericksson, Juande Ramos or Sam Allardyce.

You highlight the nature of the problem by even talking about the Champions League and Newcastle in the same breath. Newcastle’s real competitors at this stage of its evolution are not Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool or Chelsea. Newcastle must look to challenge in the second tier – the group of clubs who will be jockeying for positions in the top ten: Everton, Spurs, Manchester City, Aston Villa, Portsmouth, West Ham. Each of those sides have serious financial backing and managers who range from the excellent to the very good.

You’ve got to try to become one of the best of the rest first, before you start dreaming about the Champions League. How about regular finishes in the top six, making it to domestic cup finals, winning one or two of them? That should be the plan for Newcastle over the next 3 to 5 years. If they get lucky one year and make into the top four, then fantastic. But there should be no expectation that you are going to do it. What is required is not a flash in the pan for just one season, but sustainable progress over a number of years. Remember the old parable about the man who built on sand when he should have taken his time and built on rock, or the aphorism about not running before you can walk.

Look at the progress of sides like Seville. They started off by getting into the top six in La Liga, then winning a competition like the EUFA cup. This bred confidence. The side then started to perform even better domestically and last season pushed both Barcelona and Madrid for the title down to the last day of the season and also qualified for the Champions League. It takes time. I think it foolish for Toon fans to be talking of the Champions League now; it will only lead to heartache and once more end in tears.

News reports say that Andy (Andrew) Cole will figure, probably as a substitute. What’s the betting that Cole will come on and hit the winner against his old club? If he doesn’t, Michael Chopra probably will. It’s known as the “loop” (law of the old player) effect; a former striker always returns to score against his old club. (Well may be not “always” but often enough to make Newcastle very wary of their former players come Saturday). Roy Keane seems to have held Andy Cole back for this clash. A clever bit of psychology by Keane or just perfect timing in terms of Cole’s fitness? Cole and Chopra will be well up for this one. Newcastle beware.

Sunderland will win because of the Roy Keane factor – their players will desire it just that little bit more than Newcastle’s. I see Sunderland’s fortunes improving after this game. They will not go down.

Defeat for Newcastle will be a bitter pill for their fans to swallow, but Allardyce will survive it. Newcastle will finish the season mid-table, which would be a reasonable return on the back of last season’s poor performance. The Premier League is a very tough league. Magpie fans have unrealistic expectations of what Allardyce should be able to achieve in his first season. The message to them is: “Get real” and be patient. Remember Manchester United. It took SAF 4 years to turn United around. Newcastle are a bigger basket case now than United were in the mid-eighties. The last domestic trophy won by Newcastle is more than 50 years ago, and that was just the FA cup. Geordies, GIVE ALLARDYCE TIME.