(Due to our intrepid reporter avoiding the hotspots in the centre of Breda and going straight to the ground, this report doesn't mention the pre-match bother between Newcastle followers and people who may have been representing Breda, Feyenoord, Chelsea or God knows who. 

What is known however is that 96 people were apprehended pre-game, some for the crime of walking down the street.

Manners. 

Now there's a word that's apparently fallen from the lexicon of common usage, if the outraged letter writers of the Mail and Express are to be believed anyway....

But it's manners that should prevent us from writing in this report that the team allegedly representing Newcastle served up 89 minutes of tepid toss that could very loosely be described as Association Football.

Leaving food on ones' plate as a young 'un would inevitably draw a parental response along the lines of "there's bairns starving in Africa would be glad of that" to which the inevitable "put it in an envelope and send it to them" would invariably be followed by a sharp (and deserved) crack across the back of the napper....

And in a way this was the same sort of situation - an away win and a clean sheet in any competition is certainly not to be sniffed at, while a conquest on a foreign field is something worthy of special celebration [see Feyenoord (a)]. 

How dare we scoff at a lack of entertainment or effort from certain quarters when we've just cruised through a UEFA Cup tie 6-0 on aggregrate? Who are we to mock?

But in the half-arsed, jaundiced manner you've doubtless come to expect from this online refuge of scoundrels, we'll break with common decency on behalf of the hundreds of toon fans who bothered to turn out and cheer on their favourites and just say, as a one-off ninety minute's worth of entertainment...

This was just a load of bloody rubbish.

Discounting an early flurry which saw us have a shot on goal, the Newcastle fans behind one goal stoically backed their side through a game in which they seemingly just couldn't be arsed to break sweat and entertain their flock.

With Viana and Robert both doing reasonable impressions of unwanted dance partners, happy to remain on the sidelines without drawing attention to themselves, it was left to Kieron Dyer to try and prompt something positive from the Magpies with his running hither and thither.

That he singularly failed, along with the player formerly known as Jermaine Jenas, won't of course stop certain local journalists writing eulogies suggesting that their claims for imminent England starting places / canonisation cannot be ignored.

But the sad reality was that a team shorn of Speed and Shearer and composed of our self-proclaimed "Young Guns" just failed to go for it. 

This should have been the night when those pretenders with their oh-so-clever "breathe on the fingers" celebration should have given Sir Bobby a real headache, by playing their collective knackers off, thus signalling that the new breed had arrived and the old guard were in imminent danger of being marginalised. 

In reality it was like Walmington-on-Sea FC. Except the majority of them played like conscripted men, not volunteers.

Argue all you like about this being a dead rubber, a meaningless tie - I don't recall anyone's ferry, flight or hotel bills being reduced to a second-rate price for the occasion. Or the wages of the golden boys being reduced.........

No, those members of our squad who have never won a damn thing in football since their schooldays missed a golden opportunity to impress on a European stage. Squad places are up for grabs, but you'd never have known it from the sulky display we saw. 

It was almost a pity that Newcastle raised themselves from their collective torpor in the closing minutes to claim a goal and then from the boot of LuaLua miss one that goes into the pantheon of cock-up along with that Rosenthal effort for Liverpool at Villa a few years ago. They barely deserved it.

Never doubt the wisdom of the TV companies - if anyone had beamed this game out live, it would have emptied pubs nationwide and brought the crowds back to.....ice hockey.

We now stand at the start of what is a pivotal week and a bit for this club - eminently winnable games against the Boro, Fulham and Portsmouth lie ahead of us, along with a home tie against the Baggies in the used-to-scoff-at-it-but now-take-it seriously-since-we-ballsed-up-against-Belgrade Carling Cup.

By the end of the month we will know what this season holds for us - we'll either have dragged ourselves up the league by putting to bed teams who we need to be beating, or we'll have marked out our space along the also-rans for 2003/04 and we can look forward to pre-season airings for our passports and nowt more.

And we'll go into battle at the Riverside, Loftus Road and Gallowgate with a certain Alan Shearer at the apex of our attack - and our hopes. 

He remains the central part of this team, of this club even. While others get tangled up in off-field nonsense or apparently decide to put their country before their club, there's one bloke still knocking it out and knocking them in. Old school? Long may he continue.

Meanwhile, the playboys continue to collect their cash, quaff their champers and behave like bairns. And the annoying thing is that we'd be cheering them on in the streets and bars of Tyneside to the echo.....if only they were doing the business on the field. 

They simply fail to grasp that putting it together in a black and white shirt is the key to whatever they desire - fame, lasses, replacing Earl Grey on his plinth, whatever. Just ask Malcolm Macdonald.

Our clever lads totally failed to spot a golden opportunity in the MyCom stadium to grow up and become men. Instead they treated this game like a Pontins reserve game and their supporters like idiots. Some of those behind the goal may deserve that, but not many.

We as a club simply aren't clever enough to turn on the style when we deem the occasion to be important enough. A glimpse back into recent history, when we kept our boots clean in the games leading up to Wembley outings and then couldn't get out of first gear, is certainly real in my mind, if not the players.

I hope and trust I'll never have to pen such a miserable few lines after a Newcastle victory, but I wouldn't bet on it.