APPARENTLY, Newcastle United first learnt that their talented Canadian centre-back David Edgar had joined Burnley when they saw the news reported on television. They then rang the player to find out if it was true. “Um.....yes, really.....sorry, bye....” Edgar replied. I don’t suppose they were daft enough to ask him why he had left, although one underestimates the stupidity of the club at one’s peril.

In the same week the players who haven’t quietly slipped away from St James’ Park while no one was watching returned to training, including a certain Joey Barton who had been told by his manager, Alan Shearer, that he should not bother to come back. But Shearer is no longer the manager. Or at least he might be, who knows. If he is, then Joey should get on a train to Birmingham sharpish and start lamping people at St Andrews. If not, maybe he has a gilded future at the club.

You would need a heart of stone not to fall about laughing at the present plight of Newcastle United — and just wait until mid-August, when they step out at the Hawthorns in their new second strip which resembles the sort of pineapple cheesecake served in Italian restaurants in the early 1970s, a fabulously hideous yellow and cream concoction. I wonder how many they have sold.

Nobody knows who will eventually own the club, only that it is for sale at the unfeasibly high price of £100m. There are persistent rumours that Freddy Shepherd has his cheque book out, but also there are mysterious Malaysians hanging around who, you assume, are considering buying it for a laugh. My guess is that the average Toon fan would rather the club be sold to Kim Jong Il than Freddy Shepherd — but, as ever, a fairly large number of them still believe that Newcastle will waltz the Championship and that the team has had imposed upon it a level of opposition not befitting to its status as the greatest football club the world has ever seen.

There was one Geordie, writing on a messageboard, cheerfully looking forward to Newcastle’s Premier League challenge in the season 2010-11. You wonder, sometimes, how come Tyneside has a better supply of Class A drugs than anywhere else in the country. Football fans are almost always wrong; wrong about team selection, wrong about the manager, wrong about suitable owners and so on. The best clubs ensure that the supporters don’t have to pay too much to get in and are decently treated while watching their team, but otherwise ignore the demands from the terraces.

Newcastle United’s main problem has been that there are so many of their loyal, committed and utterly deluded supporters that they are inclined, all too often, to listen to them. Hence the ludicrous procession of managers, always following the same pattern: first, sensible man with experience of performing adequately with scant resources (Joe Kinnear, Glenn Roeder) then, when relegation is competently avoided, delusions of grandeur set in and a Messiah is demanded (Kev, Al). I have nothing at all against Alan Shearer and I’m sure that one day he will make a fine manager. But what on earth convinced the supporters that he was the man to rescue them from oblivion with eight games to go? The fact that he once scored a lot of goals? The fact that he is more articulate on Match of the Day than Martin Keown? Or is it just that he is a famous Geordie? Someone probably could have rescued Newcastle with eight games to go — one of those managers the fans don’t think quite big enough for them, most likely. Shearer brought to the club belief, without doubt — but belief manifested in an unjust cause, unfortunately.

I’m thinking of putting a bid in for Newcastle. I have only £400 in the bank right now but that seems to me a realistic estimation of the club’s worth. The temptation is to continue running it as a situation comedy, giving pleasure to millions and millions of people across the world. But the trouble is I would like the northeast of England to be a force in football and it certainly ain’t going to be Boro or Sunderland — so, the necessity is to resuscitate Newcastle.

The first task, then, is to find a suitable manager and give him a three-year contract that will be stuck to no matter what happens. And it should be a manager who is adept at stabilising floundering football clubs and getting them up and out of the Championship.

Neil Warnock springs to mind, so too a revisited Sam Allardyce. The fans don’t like the style of play? Lump it, in both senses of the term. Alan Shearer, meanwhile, will be offered the job of assistant manager just down the road at Hartlepool (I’m buying them too) for a year or two, to see how he gets on. Fellow members of my new board — and the new manager — will be enjoined to take absolutely no notice of the fans, even though there are a lot of them, on any issues other than stewarding, ticketing and the quality of stottie cakes sold on matchdays. The realistic target for the coming season, assuming there are any players left, is the top 10 with an outside bet of the playoffs. Once that is accomplished, we’ll take it from there.