I haven't written one of these for a while - but the latest farce at Newcastle United compelled me to do so. Joe Kinnear - our new Director of Football. What on earth?

I'm afraid you're going to be subjected to another ranting monologue from me. If you want to picture me standing on a soap box, shaking my fist, be my guest. Unless you've been living under a box, you will know that the FA staggeringly took the decision NOT to punish Callum McManaman after his challenge on Massadio Haidara at the weekend on some weak technicality. Pathetic.

I haven't done one of these in a while. A combination of laziness and football being an incredibly mixed bag in recent months. You have the highs of last Thursday night, with a last second winner (literally) that had 45,000 people who would never normally tap their feet to Status Quo go absolutely crackers to it. Then you have the lows - where you watch one of your players blatantly assaulted by some two-bit clogger from Wigan Athletic.

And so it was - the now annual football match between Gateshead Fell Cricket Club and Fat Man Football. What better way to run off that post-Christmas booze, turkey and mince pies than running around a wet 3G surface at Gateshead Stadium. It was a great day for all associated with Fat Man Football as they ran out comfortable 4-1 winners.

Relief. Probably the one word that was flying around the watering holes of NE1 on Saturday evening. It was 90 minutes of dross with one touch of glass that ultimately decided where the points were headed. The one disappoint was that I couldn't use my "genius" headline if we hadn't won - Ba Humbug. Clever eh?

I'm getting bored of writing about defeats. It's all I seem to do this season. I still can't work out how we have gone from Champions League contenders to relegation fodder over a summer period. We can point the finger at a lack of signings in the transfer window, but that doesn't really explain our huge fall from grace.

We never do well at Craven Cottage do we? I'm struggling to think of a win down there other than the one when Santiago Munez made an appearance in Goal. When we scored, I really felt we were going to get something as we were on the ascendancy in the second half. Alas, no.

Thank Shola for that - after a barren run (I'm all about understatements this morning) we finally put a win on the board after what feels like an eternity since we last picked up three points. West Brom wasn't it? I'm putting the win down to Shola's presence on the bench. Master tactician.

What's gone wrong? What has happened to one of the most effective units in the league? This makes for depressing reading, so if you've already got the Monday Blues - look away now or cheer yourself up with a bit of Radiohead.

I've no idea what it is about Anfield. We always seem to crumble when we step onto that pitch. This was comfortably the worst Liverpool team I had ever seen, and we allowed them far too much time on the ball. We made them look a lot better than they actually are.