IN TRUTH, we should have seen what was coming. When Graeme Souness replaced Sir Bobby Robson as Newcastle boss in September 2004, he was forced to take a week of gardening leave as his former club, Blackburn, visited St James' Park.

The resultant 3-0 win underlined the strength of the Magpies squad the Scot was to inherit but, more presciently, it also provided a harrowing glimpse into the future.

Blackburn were awful, described in The Northern Echo as "defensively nave, susceptible to set pieces, racked by internal disputes and tensions, and prone to leaking goals at the most inopportune of moments".

Fast forward 17 months and the same applies to Newcastle. Fittingly, Souness' final home game in charge of the club was a 1-0 defeat to Blackburn and, while Mark Hughes had transformed the visitors into a competitive and tightly-knit unit, United's supposed saviour had moulded the Magpies into a rag-bag assortment of the unskilled and unmotivated.

There were occasional high points along the way but, for the most part, Souness' reign was an unmitigated disaster.

If short-term replacements Glenn Roeder and Alan Shearer fail to arrest Newcastle's rapid slide towards the relegation zone, his legacy could yet be a calamitous spell in the Championship. Forget about two seasons of under-achievement, that would put the club's entire future on the line.

Not that anyone was expecting any different when he was appointed, of course.

Bitterly divided following Freddy Shepherd's knee-jerk dismissal of Robson, Newcastle's fans came together to express a mutual distrust of Souness.

It was universally accepted that he was not Shepherd's first choice - it is questionable whether he was even in the initial top ten - but at least he promised an end to the indiscipline and in-fighting that had blighted the latter stages of Robson's reign.

It did not take long to realise that such a promise came with significant strings attached. With the likes of Craig Bellamy and Laurent Robert having been frozen out of St James' Park, Souness has successfully rid Newcastle of two of the club's most volatile figures. Unfortunately, he has also removed two if its most important.

Bellamy and Robert might not have been the most effective players on Tyneside but, symbolically, their significance far outweighed their end product.

They were exciting, exuberant attackers, providing a link to the cherished days of Kevin Keegan's 'Entertainers' and hinting at a more vibrant future.

Without them, Newcastle have reverted to a pale imitation of Souness' prosaic management style. Dismantling the club's playing squad is one thing; demolishing its reputation for free-flowing attacking has proved even harder to stomach.

Perhaps Souness would have got away with it if his replacements had lived up to their billing.

Instead, a succession of terrible purchases have tarnished the Scot's reputation even further. Jean-Alain Boumsong has never looked like an £8m defender - on current form he would struggle to make £800,000 - while £2m midfielder Amdy Faye is one of the most unadventurous and uninspiring players ever to have pulled on a Newcastle shirt.

The capture of Michael Owen and Scott Parker partially redressed the balance, but those buys were quickly overshadowed by the £9.5m recruitment of Spaniard Albert Luque. For a manager who prided himself on signing "proper footballers", the signing of Luque has turned out to be a "proper mess".

Crucially, Luque's arrival undermined everything Souness had espoused in the past. Extol the virtues of honest English midfielders; sign a sulky Spaniard with a fear of an old-fashioned tackle. Claim there was no place for wingers in the modern game; sign an out-an-out wideman and add another in Nolberto Solano.

As this season has unravelled before his very eyes, Souness has been exposed as a short-term gambler with an absence of an over-arching plan.

Instead of laying the tactical foundations for Newcastle's long-term development, the former Liverpool midfielder has been scrambling around in the dark in a futile attempt to stumble across a cure-all solution.

One week, Shola Ameobi appears on the left of midfield, the next it is Charles N'Zogbia. One game, Amdy Faye partners Scott Parker in the middle, the next they make way for Lee Bowyer and Emre. And, all the while, the technical ability of Newcastle's players continues to dumbfound. Whatever Boumsong and Titus Bramble have been doing on the training ground in the last 17 months, it has not involved learning how to defend.

A harsh assessment, perhaps, because there have undeniably been mitigating factors in Souness' defence. During his time on Tyneside, a staggering 21 senior players have suffered an injury severe enough to sideline them for at least a fortnight.

Kieron Dyer has started just two games since the middle of last April, Emre, Stephen Carr, Scott Parker and Steven Taylor have all spent protracted spells on the treament table this term and, most critically of all, Owen's broken foot left Newcastle reeling at the turn of the year.

It is quite conceivable that, had Owen not limped out of action at White Hart Lane, Souness could still have been in a job today.

From that point onwards, however, the writing was on the wall.

Souness' dismissal took another month to come, primarily because chairman Freddy Shepherd did not want to spend the £3m compensation it eventually took to terminate his contract.

But Wednesday night's mauling in Manchester proved to be the final straw.

Dispirited and disinterested, Newcastle limped to a 3-0 defeat that bore a stark similarity to a certain other three-goal reverse some 17 months earlier.

For Souness' Blackburn, read Souness' Newcastle. Just as a leopard cannot change its spots, so a manager cannot keep pretending he is something that quite clearly he is not