The saying goes that when a man marries his mistress he creates a job vacancy. When a football club who have endured years of ridicule find themselves in the hands of a man many times richer than Roman Abramovich, there is room for a new Manchester City. The strongest contenders for the role are Newcastle United, who are morphing into the club at which most people have a good chuckle and thank the Lord they do not support.

It has come to a head this week with the Kevin Keegan debacle. However, we (I am going to have to own up to my allegiance) have been in training for this new role for some time and becoming the new Manchester City may be the making of us.

First some background on the training to become the new City: promotion to the top flight, great signings, almost champions, everyone's second club, buy Alan Shearer, flirt with Europe, brush with relegation, two disappointing FA Cup Finals, mid-table mediocrity, a succession of interesting managerial appointments, some strange signings, no longer everyone's second club, Keegan's dramatic exit. It has been an action-packed and at times farcical 16 years.

Clubs who get rid of managers before September have either been recently taken over by billionaires, or they are run by people who sit uneasily on the line between genius and madness. Why give someone a pre-season to get a squad of players ready and then sack them a few games in? There is no logical explanation; there is nothing logical about football any more.

While City fans are getting giddy with the prospect of some more big signings in January, they need to be prepared for the change in public reaction to their club. All that kept everyone from finding Chelsea's success repulsive was a succession of loveable, charismatic or peculiar managers. We secretly hoped that they would fail and prove that money alone could not buy success. Now Dr Sulaiman al-Fahim has arrived on the scene, we know that there is no point being cynical; City could be in the Champions League final in three seasons. In the face of the new City, Chelsea will resemble a cosy, family-owned club.

So, with the power base shifting, somewhere down the global football food chain there is a niche market opening up for Newcastle. While City risk losing some neutral empathy, we should be picking up the pieces. Britain may be fast turning into a nation used to winning and winners after last month's Olympic Games in Beijing, but we do not want to become Australian in our attitude to sport. There should always be room for a football club in the Premier League who are more Fawlty Towers than Trump Towers. I am quite looking forward to our new status, and here is why:

We will become more appealing to the neutral. Most fans started getting irked by Newcastle around the back end of the last decade. We were accused of being above our station, deluded in our expectations of being a top-four club. No one can accuse us of that any more. Our expectations are much lower - a good left back and stability would be nice.

We make you feel good about yourself. “Oh well,” you will say when you glance around your settled squad of players, your suited and booted chairman who drinks orange juice in the stand and your manager who has been in charge for three years. “It may all be quite sensible and a bit mid-table here, but at least we are not Newcastle.” It is nice to make people feel good about themselves.

We can do self-deprecation. One lone City fan was pictured outside the club's stadium with a tea towel on his head when it was announced that the Abu Dhabi United Group was taking over. If that had been us, there would have been at least 30,000 fans appearing in their lunch hour with tea towels at the ready outside St James' Park. We have had to take ourselves seriously in the past few years, maintaining the pretence of wanting to be a top-four club. Now we can let it go and recapture the humour in our football.

We will pick our battles and live off the small victories for longer. Didn't you secretly have a soft spot for Sven-Göran Eriksson when City did the double over Manchester United last season? It was that David and Goliath thing. City fans dined out on it for a season. We will treat our Tyne-Wear derbies with the respect they deserve and we shall arrange open-top bus parades if we do the double.

In admitting some kind of defeat, I am crying into the page. It is like the middle-aged woman who gives up the gym, the diets and the highlights for old age, grey hair and chunky thighs. Somewhere in the attic there is a photograph of Newcastle United holding aloft a trophy, but we are going to have to give up the ghost for a while.