£1.8 million for eight matches.
Or £225,000 a game.
Or £2,500 a minute.
Now we know the cost of a Messiah on Tyneside. No wonder Alan Shearer decided to forsake his comfortable perch on the Match of the Day sofa. No wonder he decided Gary Lineker was not necessarily the most convivial Saturday night company. Frankly for that sort of money he would have been tempted to try and save Charlton Athletic.
Mind, if he does it, if Shearer proves that a total lack of managerial experience is no bar to success, if he does significantly better than that other dugout rookie Diego Maradona and manages to remain unthrashed for his two months of graft, then it will have been money well spent. Indeed, it might - just might - turn out to be the shrewdest spin of the dice in the career of Mike Ashley, [the ownwer of Newcastle] a man for whom sizeable gambles have become part of his life.
Consider the options open to the Newcastle owner. He has been anxious to sell the club since the point last summer that the previous Geordie Messiah - Kevin Keegan - walked out in disgust. It was at that moment that the relationship between him and the barcode-clad masses soured to the point of no return. He too wanted out. But it was also the point at which the international financial system decided that it could not longer sustain itself on a diet of unseasoned debt. No-one was going to buy a used football club from a man like him, particularly at the price he was quoting.
So, in an evident strop, he turned his back on the place, allowing a pernicious drift to set in. For a while Joe Kinnear did a reasonable job stemming the inertia. But when his health began to succumb to the pressure, the sense of hopelessness really set in: this appeared to be a club sleep walking to disaster. For the many faithful (and let's not for a moment forget it is ultimately their money - in ticket and replica shirt sales - that sustains the club) nothing seemed to be being done to counter the inevitable.
Indeed there were those among the season ticket holders who felt that relegation might just act as the purgative necessary to rid the club of the poisonous elements which had leached off it too long. For Ashley the disaster would not have been one of pride or passion. It would have simply been financial. The asset he hoped to offload would be worth half as much in the Championship.
He had, however, let things slip way beyond the point where conventional medicine would help. Eight matches to go and relegation looks less a possibility and increasingly a certainty. Especially with the rivals for the drop beginning to show evidence of fight and form sorely lacking at St James' Park (well, Stoke and Hull at least).
With the transfer window shut, with the dressing room full of mercenaries looking for the exit, with the crowd subdued and distressed, the room for manoeuvre had long disappeared. The only way to face down impending doom was to galvanise the one thing that might now at this late, late stage make a difference: the renowned local passion. And persuading Shearer to step in will do that. The noise of welcome at St James's will be astonishing.
Sure, anyone who has seen him on Match of the Day might baulk at the suggestion that Alan Shearer is some sort of passion alchemist. As a pundit the man appears to define the word bland. But that is wholly to misunderstand the relationship he has with the crowd at St James's. Tomorrow when the team runs out to face Chelsea, the sound will threaten the superstructure of the stands.
A mix of relief, excitement and possibility, it will stir something in everyone concerned. It might just be enough to remind the players of their responsibilities. It might just be enough to alarm the opposition. It might just be enough to do it. What all this means in short, is that Newcastle have done what every crisis club who have run out of options ultimately has to do: they have turned to the fans.
By: Jim White
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