The alarm bells haven't started ringing loudly yet, but it wasn't just the post-match bucket of 5% lager that caused a distant clanging in my head on Sunday morning......

To lose at Stamford Bridge is now so much of an everyday happening to us that it's almost not worth commenting upon. To lose so ineptly however, and look so incapable of lifting ourselves in the process is something demanding of both criticism and examination.

But let's start with the off-field action, of which there was a fair amount.

Newcastle fans arrived at the ground in what seemed to be a fairly poor mood generally, having forked out £40 a time for admission.

However, given the fact there were enough people prepared to pay that to snap up all the tickets, maybe the other grounds have got it  wrong, and Ken Bates provides the voice of commercial reason.....or maybe he is just a greedy tw*t as the song went....

The one thing the inflated ticket price didn't stop was a high knacker contingent in the away end though, and after a series of debatable decisions in the first half, the adjacent press box found itself under something of a siege. 

Members of the Tyneside intelligentsia gave their own personal punters panel views about the ref to those journalists who hadn't retreated to the press room, while others desperately tried to prove their non-cockney Toon credentials by brandishing their Newcastle United cufflinks at the ugly mob....

On to the second half then and with the team two down, the support was beginning to wane. Enter the United subs, who warmed up for an inordinate period on the narrow strip of track between the pitch and the away section. 

They were then joined by a certain Mr JF Hasselbaink, who upon being asked by the Chelsea fans to our right what the score was, gave a two handed approximation by use of his fingers. That he did this to the Newcastle fans wasn't a very clever trick, but what had been mild cat-calling graduated to your average-bog-standard-old-style-abuse-the-darkie scenario.

One or two folk attempted to join Hasselbaink on the sidelines to have a personal audience, but a fair number of those who took offence merely contented themselves with around a minute of "ooh ooh" monkey impressions. 

What Jenas and Ameobi thought of this wasn't recorded.

This didn't seem especially to affect JFH, who duly returned after the third goal with an amended finger gesture, despite by this point having been asked by one sane steward to pack it in.

By then those Toon fans involved appeared to have calmed down - certainly some had gone home. Of the rest though, more than one or two were engaged in animated discussions with Newcastle fans who had the temerity to object to their lunatic behaviour.

As a consequence of this, a number of fans were ejected by stewards and police while others were engaged in trying to start fights and issue threats of reprisal.

Not surprisingly the final 20 minutes of the game were a total non-event off the field and support dwindled away as people just threw in the towel. Bit like the team really....

The question has to be asked - what the hell got into some of our lot on Saturday?

Without trying excuse the actions of the idiots (after all there was a brief bout of racist crap at Man City this season so wasn't a one-off) maybe the surroundings we were in at Stamford Bridge have something to do with it.

We're not talking feng shui here, but the away section is a cramped, old-fashioned pen that is reminiscent of the worst of the 1980's, and this seems to bring out similarly old-fashioned behaviour from it's occupants. 

Already this season Arsenal fans have indulged in boorish antics, with an empty beer bottle being flung at a player from this section - and what the hell the Gooners have got to be upset about? 

As for the team, it's difficult to be objective when faced with a poor performance on this ground, so often have we endured it.

From the off though the team seemed to be in as negative a frame of mind as the fans, and the Bellamy/ Desailly incident seemed at first sight to be a case of the taffy over-reacting once, then creating a second falling over opportunity out of nothing. Would that he could have fashioned something in the goal-scoring stakes....

And as for Shearer - once Desailly had sinned it was obvious that retribution would follow from a boot or other extremity of our captain at some stage, but catching him a few moments later right in front of the referee was just daft. And he didn't even do it properly, Desailly walking away sans limp.

Thereafter Shearer looked sullen, joining Bernard (bewildered), Robert (disinterested) and most of the others in having ineffective afternoons. 

In a nutshell we were vulnerable to pace and in particular the assured first touch, accurate passing and good movement of the home side. 

Our ponderous attacks failed to hit Chelsea on the break - the one time Dyer burst forward he lost his way to goal and the chance disappeared. Had LuaLua been considered he may have shaken things up a bit, but you'll have to ask Bobby about that one.....

Too many players meandered around in midfield, with Speed manfully trying to keep things together on his own in that area - Acuna or Jenas would perhaps have helped him bail out the sinking ship for longer.

Midfield shortcomings allowed the home side to gallop forward and stretch our backline, and a better side than Chelsea could have got a hatful - that's the frustrating thing, Ranieri's team are good but not great.

At the back our well-documented and currently fashionable defensive shortcomings were evident to a certain extent, but no amount of organising or coaching could have avoided the human error of goals two and three. 

Quite simply we didn't have the quality to score a goal - therefore once Chelsea went ahead we were a beaten side. Unfair in those circumstances to blame Titus, Nicos or whoever in isolation. Or the referee.

We could probably have done without a trip to Kiev this week in the run up to the mackem visit, but regardless of what country our preparation is done in, three points are essential against Peytar & Co.

Putting alongside local concerns, to miss out on another three points would be to allow other teams to pull still further away from us at this early stage in proceedings. There will be a revival at some stage and the newspapers will have to switch their attentions to thought-provoking articles about some other poor saps, but we cannot afford to slouch around until the clocks go back.

If this day can be summed up it's that both team and fans allowed themselves to be sidetracked too easily. Quite literally we took our eye off the ball and were made to pay. Mistakes were made, lessons have to be learned and without further delay. 

PS: There is one easy way to cut off the problems that caused stewarding headaches and all the other associated nastiness of this game - move the away fans section elsewhere, in the manner of SJP.

If Chelsea stuck the travellers up in the gods - say one corner of the old Shed end, there'd be no risk of pitchside incursions, no subs to annoy, no press to harangue.....and facilities that are an improvement on the farmyard stockade our £40 currently buys us. 

The chances of this happening of course are about as remote as us winning a match at this damn place.