ALMIGHTY God has his favourites, whom he blesses with his beneficence; and then there are those who, for some unexplained reason, he cannot stand and upon whom he ladles misfortune, misery and humiliation. Such as, for example, Newcastle United. Just last week he got the ladle out again, perhaps annoyed that Glenn Roeder had succeeded in lifting a very ordinary side safely away from the drop zone against all expectations (or at least mine; I had a tenner on them to go down).

He put mischief in the hearts of the club’s supporters, a little germ of bitter discontent at some imagined unfulfilled potential. “Roeder out, Roeder out!” the fans chanted, as if they had suddenly became aware this was yet another season where they weren’t going to win anything at all, let alone anything worth boasting about. “Roeder out!” they bellowed, forgetting that this likeable mild-mannered man had rescued them from the hell of last season when, winless after five games, they were bellowing with great conviction: “Souness out, Roeder in! Souness out, Roeder in!” And promptly got their wish granted. Just as they got their wish granted a short while before when the chant had been the almost sacrilegious: “Robson out! Robson out!”

The poor Geordies do not know on what side their stotty cake is buttered; I remember them calling for the head of Joe Harvey, the most successful manager at St James’ Park in 50 years and the last to win them a trophy they might reasonably be proud of, the Fairs Cup, back in 1969. Unless you count triumphs in the Anglo-Italian tournaments of the early 1970s, the Texaco Cup of 1975 or the Intertoto Cup of 2006, all trophies that have stamped indelibly on the thinnish silver plate: “For second-rate also-rans only.”

As did, I suppose, the Fairs Cup, although that win over Upjest Dosza, conjured by the loyal journeymen Bobby Moncur and the ungainly Wyn Davies, was at least thrilling and against the odds. I watched it on a crackling and spitting black-and-white TV, a little kid cheering himself hoarse among northern relatives who were, to a man, Middlesbrough supporters but who had put their usual visceral loathing aside for the evening.

You have to go back to 1955 for the last time Newcastle United won anything — the FA Cup, in this case — which the big clubs really cared about. And this season marks the 80th anniversary since they last won the league. Why has it been so long? They are, after all, the third best supported club in England, after Manchester United and Arsenal. These days there is an almost one-to-one relationship between fans coming in and trophies piling up in the boardroom; with the transient exception of Chelsea, the clubs with the biggest fanbase win most things. But not Newcastle; not this season, or last season, or the one before that; not ever since 1955. Why is this?

Bad administration, I suppose, a succession of beefy megalomaniac northern businessmen suffused with an almost inconceivable arrogance. That’s one answer. If only they had had a Steve Gibson, they lament, looking enviously down the A19 towards the “little” club, Middlesbrough — the little club that recently won the League Cup, got to the final of the Uefa Cup and may well finish above Newcastle in the league this season.

But that’s not the sum of it; misfortune drapes itself around the shoulders of the Toon and breeds within the supporters a gnawing discomfort: nobody is good enough for them. “Keegan out! Keegan out!” they bellowed at the best manager they’ve had since Harvey, and now it’s “Roeder out!”, the best manager they’ve had since Keegan. It is not Roeder’s fault that Michael Owen ended up with a foot facing in the wrong direction while playing for England: with Owen - a reluctant conscript, to be sure, nobody wants to live in the northeast of England for reasons that elude me - and with a fit squad Newcastle would have been top six, at least. Without him, and with calamitous injuries, nothing.

So, it’s God’s fault. Perhaps he hates the Likely Lads and Lindisfarne and Ant and Dec (for which, fair comment, Lord). But having placed in the hearts of the Geordies a deep dissatisfaction with Roeder, he then set about more mischief and spite. Who should replace him? Someone utterly hopeless, someone the fans already hate, even before he’s been installed. Someone as unGeordie as its possible to get. Yep, got it, Sven. A marriage made in heaven.

It doesn’t matter that the club have denied approaching Sven; you sort of just know it will happen. A manager whose only truly remarkable achievements came some quarter of a century back with Gothenburg and taking Lazio to the Serie A title after spending tens of millions on players; apart from that, he has taken a succession of clubs to within an ace of great things, but almost never won them. It is too perfect. Nobody embodies unfulfilled potential quite like Sven-Göran Eriksson.

When you think about it, the only choice for Newcastle that could possibly be worse than Sven is Steve McClaren, who is a bit like Sven except without the charisma, intelligence and floozies. I wouldn’t bet against that, one of these days, either. Poor Newcastle.