Newcastle fans are at the best of times an easy bunch to rile up.
For many years since the arrival of Mike Ashley, there have been plenty of moments to rile fans - almost in the manner of a bull being waved a red (and blue) flag. Be it renaming the stadium after his own firm twice, the sacking of Chris Hughton, selling Andy Carroll 45 minutes before the transfer deadline in January 2011, underselling Yohan Cabaye, appointing Joe Kinnear twice, investing the bare minimum or presiding over relegation, the owner is clearly a problem issue.
His lapdog manager and cheap coaching staff is hardly a help either. Alan Pardew is in debt to the owner after his mind-bogglingly stupid headbutt at Hull in March - along with his alleged gambling debts - and as a result remains in charge, while a cheaply assembled coaching staff who clearly need a refresher in certain aspects toil beneath him.
Therein lies the issue of how a supposedly impressive summer has fallen flat in practice. It looked as though for once, things may have actually gone right. Nine new players went into St. James' Park, including World Cup players and other internationals.
But when you think about it further, the £39million spent on players is essentially the same money received for Yohan Cabaye and Mathieu Debuchy, who left for these combined fees to PSG and Arsenal respectively, with a little petty cash on top.
This means that for 2014, the club has a net spend of £5million, despite receiving over £80million for a top-half finish last season. Naturally, some of this will be going towards the club's wage bill, but there is no reason at all why this shouldn't have included a fee for another player, be it in attack or in defence - both areas the club looked light in coming to transfer deadline day.
We could have and should have bought in the new centre-half early, and its not as if some weren't available. But it appears Pardew wanted to maintain a centre back pairing of Fabricio Coloccini and Mike Williamson - a pairing which was so successful for opposition strikers during our depressing cycle of maulings at the end of last season.
Rather than strengthen this department, the board have inexplicably made it weaker. While Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa had difficult spells in black and white, his more technical defensive strategy would have made him a good long term replacement for Roma. Yet somehow, the limited Williamson and the embarrassing Steven Taylor are ahead of him.
We needed that new centre-half, but the only signing made there - Jamaal Lascelles - was immediately loaned back to Nottingham Forest, meaning any injury to one of our defenders and youngsters like Curtis Good and Remie Streete are being thrown in at the deep end. Maybe they will come good but its a bold gamble to take.
The lack of signing a new goalscorer is painstakingly problematic. Loic Remy was never going to stay on Tyneside, but the almost willful blindness is baffling. It puts a lot on players new to the country - so far, Emmanuel Riviere has led the line but has never once looked like scoring, Ayoze Perez shows promise but is only used sparingly and Facundo Ferreyra appears to have gone missing since his unveiling at the start of August.
It appears as though the club are expecting Papiss Cisse to immediately turn good again after he returns from injury in November - a bold anticipation given he has been dreadful for most of the last two seasons.
As if that wasn't enough, we then move onto the fans' biggest bone with the whole sorry shenanigans. That is Hatem Ben Arfa, who was sent out on loan to Hull City on deadline day.
The terms of the Premier League loan moves means that Ben Arfa won't be playing for the Tigers at St. James' Park and showing up what can only be described as a shaky defensive regiment. But for all his flaws, he is still a good player, and if he leads Hull to performances that keep them above the Toon for the 2014/15 campaign, then the calls of Pardew's incompetence will grow louder.
Ben Arfa has only joined the Tigers because of the fact that he fell out with Pardew, which also explains the unnecessary and perhaps even more damaging departure of Yanga-Mbiwa.
Not for the first time, Pardew blamed the fans for a bad result - this time, he blamed them for the concession of a 95th minute goal to draw against Crystal Palace. But against Palace its doubtful we deserved a win anyway.
Until the introduction of youngster Rolando Aarons, our attack was plodding and looked like it would never break through a six man defence Palace turned up with. Yohan Gouffran looked disinterested, Moussa Sissoko ran without product and the new trio of Remy Cabella, Siem de Jong and Riviere never looked in the game at all. Indeed, all our defensive and attacking running in midfield seemed to be left to Jack Colback, and while he may have been dubbed the Ginger Pirlo by fans after his England call-up this week, that is a lot of responsibility on one player's shoulders.
The failure in coaching in attack is becoming an epidemic. We have only scored in eight league games in 2014, and rarely look like scoring to boot. Some fans argue we send too many forward but its not the numbers as the pace. The team's ponderous attack wastes opportunities with ponderous slow-motion play, and the set-pieces remain by and large as woeful as ever.
The problem for this, conspiring to make a thin squad even thinner and selling players for disagreeing with him rests with Pardew, who resembles a spent force on Tyneside. Some fans drew similarities between Saturday's 3-3 draw with Palace and a 3-3 draw with Wimbledon FC at the start of the 1999-00 season, which put huge pressure on then-manager Ruud Gullit, who was duly dismissed from the job after defeat in the Tyne-Wear Derby later that week that left the club marooned in the bottom 2
While Ashley's continual bare minimum spending approach continues to damage the squad, the situation is exacerbated by a man woefully inept at controlling and coaching his playing squad, and the sooner he goes, the better.
Sadly, Pardew is only two years into the albatross that is that eight year deal, and it would take an almost biblical lack of form to see the back of him. Unluckily for him, such a run is looming - Newcastle lost all four equivalent fixtures of their next four, and against all four opponents, displayed awful performances. A similar run here would leave the Toon bottom of the Premiership in the October international break, which would encourage even further fan dissent and then what?
This fatalism is perhaps the only way Pardew would be removed from office, but until then, we're going to have to hope for him to actually recall the tactics and harmony of the famous 5th place campaign rather than his plodding, stodgy, dreary anti-football adopted since.
This situation cannot continue as is and at some point, something is going to have to give.
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