Sunday will see the Premier League finished, with potential for Geordie tears heavily on the agenda. While the more circumspect supporters of Newcastle United are steadying themselves for the worst yet also considering that relegation might just be for the best, much of the nation readies itself for comedic images of Toony tears.

Rent-a-gob Oasis rocker Noel Gallagher perhaps best summed up the feelings of a sizeable group when he said: "I hope Newcastle go down. There's no better sight than seeing fat, topless Geordies crying."

Harsh but fair? It’s certainly unfair on a number of the club's fans; those who do not expose themselves in such an uncouth fashion and actually show signs of having a grip on reality. A minority of the club's current players can also escape with pride hurt but intact.

Few will have sympathy for Mike Ashley, an owner whose public face of ownership has included an unspeaking beer-swilling presence in a replica shirt, a disappearing act and nowadays, a grinning loner in a XXXL white shirt with added bar-scarf. Still no speaking, save for a hand-wringing open letter to fans which did little to quieten the anger at a man who has put millions into a club yet failed to read the runes.

Ashley has paid for his choice of friends, having to pay off the similarly reclusive Dennis Wise and Tony Jimenez along with the cash it took to employ Alan Shearer to take over the bar at this last-chance saloon. As for Joe Kinnear, he delivered better comedy than results. First came his improbable arrival from the footballing wilderness and then came that f-worded rant. Yet even before bad health took its sadly predictable hold, things were lurching towards disaster. Kinnear's win percentage does not match well with his predecessors.

Many clubs have fallen victim to unpopular stewardship. Currently, Manchester United's Glazer time-bomb ticks on. Liverpool's "Barnum and Bailey" act of Gillett and Hicks also approach the D-Day of an unpaid loan. Though we don't know the cost of it yet, at least those clubs have enjoyed success. As yet, they deserve no sympathy. Newcastle, fortunes falling as low as they have been in nearly 20 years, surely deserve some. Yet it seems in short supply.

The "Geordie Nation", a phrase also derided by Gallagher in the same rant on his recent radio double act with Russell Brand, has used up its chances with many. Sir John Hall was the man who took Kevin Keegan back to the club as manager and around that time spoke of his hopes for a "team of Geordies", a kind of Athletic Bilbao of England's North-East. At the time, that sense of local pride looked laudable, especially as Hall hoped to regenerate an economically depressed city with the football club as the centre of that plan.

Newcastle were "everyone's second-favourite team", a result of their attacking zeal, exciting matches and not being Manchester United. That sense of national admiration has departed. Perhaps it happened when Keegan did the second of his flouncings from St James' Park. Kenny Dalglish and Ruud Gullit failed to recapture the imagination with some bad buys and two execrable FA Cup Final performances.

When Bobby Robson took over, the club had a true Geordie in charge and started to play decent football again. During the 2001-2 and 2002-3 seasons, Newcastle were again the entertainers though never looked like claiming honours. That lack of silverware yet fervent support is used as proof by Magpies fans of a status of "true supporters", as compared to those who support the teams with more glitter in the trophy cabinet - the "glory hunters".

Many choose to deride Newcastle fans for getting overly excited about what seem like the smallest crumbs of success, for example the riotous scenes that greeted the recent win over Middlesbrough. There was still a job to be done but black and white scarves were being waved in paroxysms of delight...the type of premature elation that brings hoots of derision from the rest of the watching public. Those chickens came to roost during the loss to Fulham.

Robson was ousted from the club as the victim of, firstly, boos from sections of the crowd who had forgotten the resurrection job he had done and then Freddy Shepherd, the chairman, a man who had been taped showing open contempt for fans of the clubs spending money on tacky merchandise and comparing the womenfolk of Tyneside to "dogs".

Once Robson had gone, to be replaced by Graeme Souness and Glenn Roeder, national sympathy deserted the club. Not the fans' fault, of course, but Shepherd's removal of such a dignified man reflected the lack of reality that forever thwarts the club's development.

Since then Sam Allardyce has been put through the mixer, his brand of football not matching Geordie expectations of the type of football they played under Keegan and Robson. When Keegan returned, hysteria was fully back in tow, while hilarity ensued elsewhere as fans cavorted and remembered the days when...they didn't win anything. Ashley played the populist card and lost, mostly as a result of his use of a joker in the pack in "the Cockney mafia" of Wise and co, friends he met in a London casino.

Keegan exited again, back to the circus from whence he came, leaving the one where he’d been inaugural ringmaster.

That takes us to the present day and Alan Shearer, the last messiah. And to many, a charmless one. He has done little to augment a terrible team playing with little confidence, with two home performances against Fulham and Portsmouth surely as bad as any that Allardyce had served up. Michael Owen meanwhile is more remembered at Newcastle for the Nuremberg-style rally that greeted his arrival than anything he has actually done on the pitch. Those images of thousands of fans thronging the ground, seemingly at the drop of a hat, always meet with mockery.

Owen will soon be gone, Shearer may stay and may well save Newcastle United from the abyss, both footballing and financial, that many think they deserve. Delusions of grandeur and arrogance rarely make for national appeal and charm. Don't be surprised if many are cheering on Aston Villa on Sunday.

Relegation may serve as a Geordie reality check. But don't count on it.