For many Newcastle United supporters, Boxing Day feels a world away now.
After a 5-1 demolishing of (9-man) Stoke City, the Toon sat 6th in the Barclays Premier League table and seemingly well-poised to try and make a push for a return to European football - perhaps even an unlikely Champions League challenge.
Sure, it hadn't been all plain sailing - a random and inexplicable home defeat to Hull City was irritating, while another derby defeat led to agitation for supporters - but it seemed as though there was momentum going for a decent charge.
Even despite defeat by Arsenal three days later, it still seemed on, and that performance did show potential, with a lucky free-kick and awful marking the only division between the two teams.
Had 2014 seem this form maintained, its possible the Toon could be in the fourth place race. But as we all know, this is as far from the case as possible.
So far, 2014 has been a repeated series of kicks in the balls for Magpies fans. The team have only scored in two games this year, been knocked out of the FA Cup by the team that currently sit second-bottom of the Premier League, sold their best player, bought no replacement and seen an unrelenting deterioration of performances across the board.
The one victory so far in 2014 for the Magpies was a superb 3-1 win at West Ham, which was quickly followed by the sale of Yohan Cabaye. Meanwhile all home games so far have not gone so well. The 2-0 home defeat by Manchester City was partially not helped by amateur refereeing and a failure to keep calm in the wake of it, but the 3-0 demolition at home by Sunderland was a horror-show from top to bottom.
That afternoon saw absolutely nothing go right, with no sense of tactics, effort or interest in the clash - something Sunderland duly punished.
Last night's 4-0 catastrophe at home to Spurs was the curdled buttercream icing on the mouldy cake. By the end, there were ridiculous scenes as Spurs players by the bucketload queued up to try and get a goal, with the entire team having seemingly stopped caring.
Apathy seems to be on the rise amongst fans, along with venom and agitation towards the forever-unpopular owner Mike Ashley, and the manager Alan Pardew, with the Pardew-out crowd gaining further traction.
Outsiders to the club think this is harsh, given this is a season that has already yielded away wins at Manchester United and Spurs.
But this is overlooking the continuous PR bollocks he comes up with to help divert attention away from those above, which keeps the party line in check and unquestioned. You get the feeling Pardew may want to actually say more than just that, but this is all that he says - even before questionable tactical choices both before and after Cabaye.
To his credit, they have improved on the 2012-13 season, where Pardew didn't seem to know what he was doing from the word go. After all, it started started with attempts to play Papiss Cisse and Demba Ba in roles where they impeded one another, before reverting to the previous year's tactic with players in differing roles they didn't adjust to, and then on to a wild guesswork of a tactic that almost yielded relegation.
More recently, however, tactics appear not to function as well, while motivation, ambition and attempts to play football don't seem present, or at least present in all the players.
Players are certainly providing problems. Moussa Sissoko seems very little like the galloping midfield presence people first assumed he would be, while Davide Santon has seen all pretence of form collapse. Elsewhere, Cisse is continuing his lack of form, Hatem Ben Arfa has lost his footballing imagination, Vurnon Anita seems swamped without Cheik Tiote, and one clean sheet since Steven Taylor was given starts hints at just how much the injured Fabricio Coloccini is missed.
When even stellar performers like Tim Krul, Mathieu Debuchy and Yoann Gouffran are struggling to have impacts, stuff really is flying in painful batches.
Something is really going wrong badly, and it is reaching the point where, with 12 games to go, there is little riding on Newcastle's season.
This self-destruction means Newcastle are not going anywhere near the European place race, while the accumulation of points in the first half of the campaign means that relegation is a very unlikely option, barring some sort of bizarre conspiracy of results for everyone below and an even more cataclysmic loss of form.
With Europe and relegation unlikely, it means Newcastle are now the only real team stuck in midtable with nowhere to go. This begs the question if the only thing left is simply gliding to the finish line, with little more than obligation riding on the remaining games of the 2013-14 season.
Such a nature will only encourage greater fan apathy and agitation, but as long as the top-half place is guaranteed, and a boycott is not arranged to impact on ticket and merchandise money, then the board clearly will not give a toss.
That is the big tragedy of the season. In December it hinted so much promise that it could be an unexpected special surprise, and under an encouraging board, it could have been. But the current board is the perfect example of one that stifles reaching for the stars, and if the players decide this is enough for them, then next season could be a painful ride.
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