Would any properly run professional sports organisation ever be likely to find itself relying for rescue in a crisis on asking a man to take a brief sabbatical from his regular job to do some temping as a messiah? Obviously not, in the real world, but in the strange realm inhabited by Newcastle United it is a different story.

For generations, when happenings at St James’ Park haven’t been suggesting a bedlam of incompetence, or a maelstrom of conflicting (and often destructively selfish) interests, they have portrayed the place as the headquarters not so much of a football club as of a quasi-religious cult whose tattered faith in glory to come is tenuously sustained by totems. It is perhaps the truest measure of how peculiar the practical and psychological workings of United are these days that, with relegation from the Premier League looming as an oppressively tangible threat, the appointment of Alan Shearer to manage the team through the remaining fixtures of the season can be seen as a rational act.

In opting to depend for survival on a great former player without a shred of managerial experience, the club’s owner, Mike Ashley, can be accused of grabbing shamelessly at a populist solution to the dire problems of his dysfunctional regime. But that doesn’t mean Shearer isn’t the best bet available to him. Newcastle have long been so bereft of consistent effectiveness on the field and of the morale necessary to raise their performances that arresting the downward spiral will call for something far more dramatic than an improved application of tactical and technical guidance. At least as important to the squad will be a galvanising fervour, new levels of commitment and collective belief that will maximise whatever talents they possess.

Crusading spirit alone won’t be enough to save them if it is not channelled intelligently, or if they cannot prove themselves a less limited group of footballers than they have frequently looked in the past few months, but without it their chances of escaping demotion to the Championship will be slight. And if there is anybody who can stimulate such productive zeal for the cause in those around him it is probably Shearer.

That can be said because in football he is as much an icon of iron-hard competitiveness as he is of emotional pride on Tyneside. He will leave the sentimentality to others. Since his earliest days in the game he has had the confidence to make unforgiving demands on fellow professionals and all the bonhomie of his introduction to the Newcastle players won’t have blinded them to the certainty that falling short of the standards he sets will bring out the uncompromising attitude demonstrated in everything he did on the field. He was more than a prolific scorer of goals (148 in 295 league appearances for Newcastle, 30 in 63 matches for England). He was a relentlessly combative presence who unnerved opponents and inspired teammates.

There has been an understandable readiness to suspect that he feels protected by the scale of the task he is inheriting, is privately reassured by the thought that honourable failure in the fight against relegation will permit him to emerge with his prestige unscathed. Such theorising seems, however, to jar with the impression of cold-eyed pragmatism he has always conveyed. More persuasive is the assumption that his Geordie loyalties were significantly encouraged towards intervention by a financial rewards package reported to be promising close to £2m if Premier League status is preserved. But Shearer, the epitome of a pro’s pro, should perhaps be credited with valuing his reputation too highly to put it carelessly at risk for even that kind of addition to his already considerable fortune. We must presume he is convinced he will succeed.

His acceptance of the offer from Ashley, whose incoherent policies at St James’ Park have evoked public expressions of ire from Shearer, stunned his best-informed friends. He signed up, he says, because he felt it would be wrong to continue sitting comfortably on the BBC pundits’ sofa when there was a chance to help the club he loves. Plainly he attached strict stipulations to undertaking the assignment, ensuring he could not be exposed to the undermining influences that bedevilled the equally messianic second-coming as manager of Kevin Keegan at the beginning of last year. Shearer has the advantage of a personality much tougher than Keegan’s but inexperience is a handicap for which neither the backing of his seasoned assistant, Iain Dowie, nor all the sage counsel he is vowing to seek may fully compensate. Being a novice in the dugout couldn’t be regarded as contributing to yesterday’s loss to innately superior Chelsea but scrutiny will intensify.

Whether or not a happier narrative is shaped over the seven matches that are left, both Newcastle United as a club and Shearer as an individual will be obliged at the end of the season to address fundamental questions about themselves and the answers appear sure to have mutual relevance. United must own up to the impossibility of being taken seriously as contenders for the major honours that have eluded them for so long if they insist on running their affairs as haphazardly and misguidedly as they have done for decades. They need a restructuring of organisation and of ethos, with emphasis on the creation of conditions conducive to the recruitment and long-term support of an outstanding manager.

As for Shearer, he must let the football world know sooner rather than later if all his mentions in recent years of an interest in a managerial career represent a genuine ambition or casual musings. Patently, he can’t say much on the subject while Joe Kinnear, who is still officially Newcastle’s manager, is recovering from heart surgery. But the moment Kinnear’s future is clarified, Shearer should enlighten us about his own. His relationship with United is, of course, liable to be affected by the next few weeks. But, regardless of what they bring, at the age of 38 it’s time for the big decision. He must want more than temping as a messiah.

Scottish duo shamed a nation

The Scots, for obvious reasons, are inclined to be more tolerant of heavy drinking than they probably should be. But as a race they have a deep abhorrence of liberty-takers. “Don’t be cheeky,” is an injunction that tends to have an unmistakably ominous ring in a Glasgow pub. So, having been guilty of inflicting a monumental, contemptuously provocative insult on the nation at large, Barry Ferguson and Allan McGregor can hardly expect sympathy as they absorb the drastic consequences of their behaviour.

If Ferguson, midfielder and captain of Rangers and Scotland, and McGregor, whose form in goal with the same club earned him selection for the national team, had limited their misconduct to a scandalously prolonged boozing spree in the Scottish squad’s hotel after returning from an away loss to Holland last weekend, being dropped for the midweek meeting with Iceland at Hampden would probably have been the extent of their punishment. They were, after all, scarcely setting a precedent (although it must be said that their marathon public session was very much a departure from recent trends, more a throwback to earlier, wilder eras). But the two players saved their worst exhibition of offensiveness for Hampden and the Scotland bench, where they ostentatiously put fingers to their faces in up-yours gestures they made certain the cameras would record. By the end of the week the sign-language shafters had been shafted, as the SFA announced that neither would ever again play for Scotland, and Rangers dismissed both from training and sent them home to nurse the news that they would be suspended without pay for two weeks.