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Inside the oak-panelled walls of the Newcastle United boardroom, only one name might make their blood run cold right now – and they’re stuck to the bottom of the Championship.

In the last decade, a solitary club has slipped through the Premier League trapdoor with the number of points Newcastle have now and that is Blackpool. Of the 30 teams to go down, the Tangerines are the only club.

In the 2008/09 season Ian Holloway – last seen being chased out of Valley Parade by Millwall fans demanding he leave his post after a harrowing FA Cup loss – had helped his team to collect 28 points after 21 games. Yet still they stumbled out of the division.

Last season, for example, Norwich slipped through the trap door with 23 points after 21 games. The vast majority are on less than 20. Most of the time, teams with 27 or more points at this stage don’t even get involved in the fringes of the survival mix.

Blackpool went down because they could only muster eight more points from a possible 54 and – to be frank – were a dolled-up Championship club in the first place. Yet even then, had they drawn another game they’d have survived in.

The scale of the collapse required to drag United into the battle at the bottom would be monstrous. By the law of averages, Newcastle are already safe. The board know that, you know that, I know that and the squad all suspect that too.

The enemy now is drift. Last season, when Newcastle had 36 points at this stage, a decision was taken to cash in on Yohan Cabaye and subconsciously at least, to allow the season to drift. Relegation wasn’t an issue, the Cups had gone and their best player was sold – what harm could it do?

They found out on May 3, when St James’ Park bore witness to the most toxic afternoon in living memory. Fans walked out, abuse rained down on the shoulders of Alan Pardew and patience that was stretched to breaking point seemed to tear that day.

Drift sounds harmless but it’s a damaging, bruising process. It rips at supporters’ loyalties and drains supplies of tolerance, which Pardew found when he himself appeared in the crosshairs of the Newcastle supporters in those final games of the season. In truth, it has hollowed Newcastle United out in the last 12 months. A year on, it feels like nothing has changed. Newcastle’s lengthy head-coach recruitment process is already longer than average and showing few signs of resolution.

(Image: Getty Images)

In France there is surprise that Remi Garde has seen the trail go cold. In Germany, there is doubt about whether Thomas Tuchel would be interested in the role. In truth, no-one has yet had a contract faxed through to them with a firm offer. John Carver says that a decision will be made by the ‘end of the month’, by which time signings are unlikely to have been made and the transfer window will have snapped shut.

This process can be dressed up any way you want to – ‘due diligence’ is the new buzz-word, replacing former watch words stability and consolidation – but if it looks like drift, feels like drift and sounds like drift it probably is drift. Newcastle cannot afford this deja vu. Fans are not deserting United in their droves – the Hull away game at the end of the month has already sold out – but the sense of unease among supporters is tangible. Discontent is never far away from fizzing over and that is an impossible environment to build something on.

United need to jolt themselves out of that drift and the way they do that is to act decisively. Unless Newcastle are working on pulling the most exquisitely qualified rabbit out of the managerial hat – and the candidates you have seen mentioned are the only ones on the radar at the moment – then two weeks should be the limit of the time it takes to conclude this deal.

Pardew left on January 3, although we had known he was going for five days. On Saturday that will be three weeks, which is time enough to make a decision and pursue it through to completion – unless, as Gary Lineker hinted earlier this week, it is being dragged out for a purpose.

The players want John Carver and Carver wants Carver. He has the backing of Jose Mourinho, Tim Krul and Daryl Janmaat but so far, he is yet to win a game. The noises coming out of the club last week were that he was unlikely to be a permanent solution but still, they are prepared to allow him to oversee arguably the most important month of the season – when players come in and the FA Cup starts.

That rather says it all. No-one at United expected Pardew to walk out like he did but they should have the capacity to act decisively and to make a difficult decision quickly and with certainty in less than three weeks – especially when the club has plenty at stake.

My issue with drift is that it asks the supporters to swallow a lot. Fans pay for season tickets that should take in the whole campaign yet here we are in January, for the second year running, with that rising sense of uncertainty and frustration building.

And there is evidence that when the pressure is off, football clubs start to take their eye off the ball. This week, Swansea sold Wilfried Bony to Manchester City for £30m. They might dump Bafetimbi Gomis for £9m later this month – and Alexandre Lacazette’s value is rising.

Newcastle could have had all three of them but they erred, waiting for the perfect deal to land on their laps.

They are still waiting. It’s an error they cannot afford to repeat.