The professionals?

Newcastle United have had the rather dubious pleasure of being labelled a 'comedy club' over the years.

It would be hard to argue against that to be honest as some of the events over the last 15 or so years, under both Freddy Shepherd and Mike Ashley, have been somewhat cringe-worthy. From the managerial merry-go-round to player unrest to tabloid horror stories and court tribunals, Newcastle has had it all and has often been a source of rich pickings for the controversy hunting media.

Things have changed though, and Newcastle are starting to have the feel of a proper club about them again. There has still been flashpoints and throwbacks to the bad old days, such as the Taylor/Carroll incident and the unwarranted, in my opinion, sacking of Chris Hughton, but on the whole we haven't been doing too bad when it comes to scandal.

The last 18 months or so have been pretty much smooth sailing in comparison to what it has been like. We have gone from being a laughing stock and from being the butt of many a joke to being a normal club. It doesn't sound that impressive, but it's progress and is indicative of how we are being run at the moment.

Chris Hughton is largely responsible for this, but everyone from the management down to the players deserves to take some form of credit for this recently found professionalism.

But to me, this feeling of being a proper club has elevated to a higher level just recently, but the only problem is that I can't quite put my finger on the reason why. I'm pretty doubtful that I feel this way because of Alan Pardew, but there has to be a reason why I feel that the club is more organised now?

Maybe its because we aren't doing too shabbily in the league? We were told at the start of the season that the squad only needed tweaking, and given what we have achieved so far it would appear to have been spot on. Could it be that the club actually does know what it is doing after all?

I'm sure that people will disagree with me, which is great as that is what 'blogging is all about, in fact it's what football is all about, so if you add the two together there should be a hell of a lot of opinions flying about. I just get the feeling that the club could, possibly, be hading in the right directon after all.

Does anyone else share this same feeling? A feeling that we are, slowly, being run like a club should be run? Or am I just being a nutter?

Your thoughts please.