When you're stuck at the bottom of the pile, it's natural instinct to look at the teams around you, to try to gauge who might be ready to make a run for safety or who might have a fork stuck in them. It's really simple: it's Survival of the Fittest, and it's nice to know when there are going to be some corpses to prop up the table and some weaklings to devour on the way to safety.

When you get used to it things become clear and easy. It doesn't seem difficult for me to follow and digest six or seven results a week and immediately compute what it means for Bolton. You develop a feel for the ebbs and flows, the tides of the relegation zone, as teams make a push only to be dragged back into the scrum, eyes and throat burning from the salt and excrement.

At the bottom there are usually a few things you cam bank on. Even when Spurs looked dead and lifeless at Christmas, nobody really believed that they were going to go down. They had too many players, too much money and too much invested to risk relegation. £40 million in parachute payments sounds like a lot, but it didn't go that far in Leeds or Southampton. Big clubs can't afford to go down, maybe moreso than the rest of the plebs in the Premier League.

That said, if any BIG team has been asking for relegation recently, even more than Spurs or Man City, it's been Newcastle United. I would love it, absolutely LOVE IT if Newcastle were relegated.

Desperate doesn't begin to describe this latest news out of St James' Park. It hasn't been a good season for Shearer so far. In between denials about the Newcastle job, Shearer has had his backside regularly kicked on MotD by Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson. His only real contribution to the show was his regular two-minute segment called Gary Lineker asks Alan, (half-joking), whether he's taking the Newcastle job.

And now he has taken the job. Maybe because the team is in much better shape than it was when Kevin Keegan stepped down, or even when Joe Kinnear had to move aside? (Umm, no). Maybe he thinks that Alan Shearer is actually the next great English manager, who will rescue the slumbering giant and lead a fresh charge to rearrange the face of World Football, painting Europe Black and White along the way? (I would hope not).

Maybe he's desperate. Maybe Mike Ashley and the loyal, loyal fans are desperate. They'd have to be to think that this was anything other than a terrible, horrible idea.

First of all, Newcastle have a terrible team. Maybe Ashley made the move now because the club's relationship with Michael Owen seems to have disintegrated, but even if Shearer can bring Owen back in and somehow get some performances out of him, the rest of the team is full of holes. Does anyone remember when Damien Duff lit up the 2002 World Cup? No, me neither.

Second, there are just eight games left and I don't fancy Newcastle in any of them.
Chelsea (A)
Stoke City (H)
Tottenham (A)
Portsmouth (H)
Liverpool (A)
Middlesbrough (H)
Fulham (A)
Aston Villa (A)

So, by my count, that's two title contenders, three teams on good runs and a local derby. Maybe it'll be good for Shearer to learn about management in the Championship?

The strangest thing is that Alan Shearer obviously had this job waiting for him whenever he wanted to take it, so why did he take it now? He could've taken over at the beginning of next season or even after they come back up, but he decided to do jump in at the deep end.

It makes sense if Shearer's a massive egomaniac, who believes that he is the only person who could save his beloved club. Or maybe he needs the money. This season Mike Ashley seems to have taken it on himself to subsidise the LMA pension fund.

Regardless, I'm convinced that this is great news for Bolton. And I wonder what the odds are on Middlesbrough staying up? My relegation instincts are telling me that Captain Shearer will be going down with his ship.

(Wait, doesn't he need badges or something? Oh yeah, nobody does that anymore. Forget it…)