As we prepare to finish our glorious season in West London, Scott Robson takes the chance to reflect on our remarkable form in the capital (let’s not mention Wembley). It wasn’t always this way…

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‘Go to London, I guarantee you won’t be appreciated. Catch the train to London, stopping at rejection, disappointment , backstabbing central and shattered dreams parkway.’

So said that luminary of social commentary, Alan Partridge.

You either love our capital or you don’t. Not so much Marmite, which isn’t as tribal as people would have you believe, but probably olives. Aye, we will go with them. London is an olive sort of place.

Newcastle United this season have turned a trip to London into a 24-hour party. Brentford, Fulham, West Ham, and Tottenham. As one-sided as you can get.

13-4 to us as things stand. It played a big part in Champions League qualification.

It’s got that good for us down there that us supporters generally swan around on boats on the Thames. A far cry from when Tottenham fans used to goad us with ten pound notes.

Now we are doing the goading. Life doesn’t get any better. A Geordie Henley. Next on ITV2.

Things have changed. In the build up to our last game of the season at Chelsea, it got me thinking that it hasn’t always been this good.

In the past, we just couldn’t take three points the minute we went past Watford or Luton. I’m not including them in that because no one cares about these really do they? Luton have gone up in my estimations in the last month, though.

As hoodoos go it was a strange one but very, very Newcastle United.

November 29 1997. Three days after losing in Barcelona in the Champions league, United beat Crystal Palace 2-1. Ketsbaia and Tomasson score and Dalglish’s wrecking ball on the entertainers is being masked by a healthy top eight place. A John Barnes cracker had already seen us beat West Ham away. We had cracked the capital. Or so we thought.

What we didn’t think would happen at the end of that game in SE19 was that, incredibly, it would take United another 1,480 days before we won a league game in the top flight in London again.

Four years and 19 days. It had gotten so bad that the Chronicle asked spoon bender and ex-Israeli paratrooper (no, I didn’t think so either) Uri Geller to intervene. The Chron is always at the cutting edge.

23 games. Here they are in all their glory.

1997-98: Wimbledon 0-0, Arsenal 1-3, Tottenham 0-2.

1998-99: Chelsea 1-1, Arsenal 0-3, Tottenham 0-2, Charlton 2-2, West Ham 0-2, Wimbledon 1-1.

1999-2000: Tottenham 1-3, Chelsea 0-1, Arsenal 0-0, Wimbledon 0-2, West Ham 1-2.

2000-01: West Ham 0-1, Arsenal 0-5, Tottenham 2-4, Chelsea 1-3, Charlton 0-2.

2001-02: Chelsea 1-1, West Ham 0-3, Fulham 1-3, Charlton 1-1.

Hoy in three Wembley defeats and a league cup loss at Chelsea and it was bleak.

We did manage to beat Orient in that spell in the league cup when Barry Hearn tried to make it a right cockney night with ‘jellied eels and a knees up’. Ironic really that the only game we won in London in three years was on Barry Hearn’s cockney themed night. You couldn’t make it up.

It’s right to point out both Arsenal and Chelsea were very good sides at the time. But Wimbledon and Charlton?

I remember coming out of the Valley just before we ended the run, thinking: will we ever win down here again? A lot to contemplate on the never-ending coach journey back. To add insult to injury, after being at a lot of those games, I couldn’t make the Arsenal game due to work. Sometimes life just kicks you in the balls.

To be fair to the squads around that time, it really wasn’t a new thing. From 1977 to 1990 we only managed on average a win in London once a year and also went three years without one between 1990 and 1993.

We lost 6-0 and 4-0 consecutively to Chelsea in the eighties and lost 8-1 at West Ham. Even going 4-0 up at half time couldn’t see us beat QPR, as we drew 5-5.

Keegan managed some respectability with a healthy 7 wins in London in his first spell, but even he had nightmares at Wimbledon, Arsenal and QPR.

In 158 Premier League games we have lost 84. That’s some going.

So what’s this new found liking for London all about? Preparing better? Better team? No psychological scars?

They all come into it. I suppose, for me it’s Eddie Howe. The bloke lives for ripping old superstitious shit like this to shreds.

We might scoff at the rationale of us suddenly being a force past the M25, but if you think about it, we are there quite a bit. A contrast of clubs, styles and success, but seven games are hugely important.

If Newcastle can continue to crack the code we can look forward to many more pisstaking boat trips in the future. Just a pity Millwall did not come up. The more, the merrier.

Scott Robson