ON FORTUNE, FATALISM, FANS AND FOOTBALL

"It's amazing how you can travel one-quarter of the way around the world and still wind up among Cubs fans." - American sportswriter and author Chuck Culpepper, on his first visit to Newcastle

In my relatively brief time following Newcastle United, I've been struck not only by the passion of the club's fans, but also by their fatalism. Their reaction often seems oddly opposite to the situation before them. Down 4-0 against Arsenal, they exhort their team back to a historic draw. Then the hero of the game is signed to a long contract, and there's hardly a hint of celebration or relief. As the Irish NUFC fan @El_Mantis put it on his well-followed Twitter feed, "People are being insanely negative about #CheiksyBoy signing a new deal. When players sign people moan. When they don't, people moan."

In America I follow two teams whose fans are widely recognized as among the most loyal in their sport: the Green Bay Packers of the NFL, and the Chicago Cubs of major-league baseball. Both sets of fans fill their stadium regardless of the team's fortunes, and travel in such droves to road games that their rivals have had to adjust their ticket procedures to prevent takeovers. One big difference, though: the Packers' fans are noted for their dogged optimism, while the Cubs' fans are noted for the same curse-minded fatalism as infects Newcastle.

The Packers have won more championships than any other NFL team. The Cubs haven't won one since 1908.

A fan might assume that losing causes fatalism, not the other way around. It's not so simple. Covering the Cubs as a young sportswriter I came to realize a team's play and its surrounding culture are intertwined. Some players tune out the fans. Others obsess over every whistle and boo, and it can't help but affect their performance. Before an early-season game in the 1980s I was among a group of writers at Wrigley Field discussing the Cubs' prospects with then-manager Don Zimmer. "If I could make them believe," Zimmer said, gesturing at the stands, "I might be able to make them believe." And he pointed into his team's dugout. Imagine how much more vulnerable players are to fatalism now, in an age when fans blog their own columns of commentary and tweet their laments worldwide.

Watching a first half yesterday in which Newcastle dominated Bolton in every respect but the score, I couldn't help but wonder whether a ball delivered before an open net to the head of Peter Lovenkrands and then to the foot of Leon Best wouldn't have failed by an inch each time if a goal was a belief rather than a hope. Does United convert on a perfect serve after the run of the game by Jose Enrique if Ryan Taylor isn't surprised the ball is there? Does yet another critical borderline offside go in Best's direction for a change if he plays for the team everyone expects to win? Bad luck, the commentators aver. But a curse can persist only so long before it's apparent something other than luck is going on.

I don't mean this as a trite paean to positive thinking or unquestioning fan fealty. Newcastle fans are right to bemoan the alternating extravagance and cheapness that has defined NUFC as a business. Newcastle fans should be critical of public communication from the club that veers between silence and ineptitude. In the absence of proper communication, Newcastle fans were right to question the seemingly arbitrary termination of a popular manager, Chris Hughton.

But the fans weren't right, in their disappointment over Hughton, to deem his successor unfit before he worked a game. The "Pardew Out" movement that greeted someone who is looking so far like one hell of a manager is a classic example of constructive criticism turning into potentially destructive fatalism. Not only has Alan Pardew raised the club's form while losing key player after key player to injury and transfer, he has revealed himself under fire to be a man of refreshing forthrightness and honesty. He deserved better than he first got. And if he and his club had been gifted with the bright side of doubt from the start, perhaps, given all the close calls since, going from relegation to Europe in one season would be more than a cloudy dream right now for Newcastle United and its indefatigable fans.