Written by Jamie Floyd.

Today, self-righteous brother Joey Barton made an impassioned plea to our undoubtedly loyal support.

Although 6,000 Newcastle fans away to Blackburn proves once again that we follow our team, Joey suggests, and probably quite rightly, that actual support in terms of singing, chanting and general encouragement is a rarity on bitter toon terraces.

“I have not yet seen the famous crowd I was expecting to hear get behind us,” grumbled the Newcastle midfielder, who was apparently shocked at the wave of vitriol poured over the Newcastle players in recent weeks.

Although I feel that Joey needs to wind in his neck at times (we’ve got Big Sam to make all of the inflammatory comments for us!) I’m right with him on this one.

Of late, St James’ has been less of a football stadium and more of a coliseum, with Newcastle fans “baying for blood” in the anticipation of current Caesar Ashley giving the thumbs down and kicking Sam out of town.

Upon hearing the moronic knee-jerk reaction of most of our supporters, I am often tempted to turn to my own fans and sing “You don’t know what YOU’RE doing!”. It’s only the fact that I’m a spanner in a fight that prevents me from doing so.

We DO have the right set-up and the best manager available to us (remembering that Sam stepped down in terms of league position to take the reins) so we need to have patience and give them a real chance to give us a solid foundation.