Football FanCast columnist Chris Mackin deciphers the latest carry on at St James Park and calls on the critics to do their worse, because at the end of the day Newcastle fans will not be moved.

In January 1997, Kevin Keegan resigned as Newcastle United manager for the first time. Back then the Internet was but a luxury afforded only the wealthiest Prince in India, and mobile phones with online connectivity were beyond the technical capabilities of even Egor out of Ghostbusters, so the news was broken to me by a malevolent Sunderland supporting headmaster who gleefully dragged me into the staffroom at break time to hear the announcement for myself. A burst of impotent devastation, a stern admonishment for my disgusting language and I was flung back out into the playground stunned, shaken and taken completely by surprise.

It's made for interesting contrast to the events of next week, where every move was documented with sickening and heart breaking proficiency. At one particularly pained part of the grim charade, in a brave attempt to make everything more palatable, I re-imagined the implosion of my football club as an overextended episode of Curb your Enthusiasm; Keegan making an inappropriate comment at Derek Llambias' mother in law's birthday party, Denis Wise attempting a flippant joke about the Falkens conflict within Jonas Gutierrez's earshot.

But it wasn't to be, and instead of ending with pleasant opera music and a preview of next week's show it concluded with a defeated letter of resignation from the one man who came out of the debacle with any sliver of credit. Say what you like about Newcastle United, we do dark humour to rival Beckett.

There's people saying Newcastle fans are getting what they deserve for being so bloody stupid and welcoming Ashley the way they did in the first place. Well, yes, point taken to a degree. There isn't a non-Newcastle supporter in the entire country who hasn't at some point noted Ashley in an away end and rolled their eyes cynically, as if their masterful powers of deduction have centred upon a piece of P.R which has utterly bamboozled the rest of us.

For whatever it's worth, though, I don't think this was so much one hundred percent acquiesce as cautious tolerance. For all the morons cheering his pint downing in the pub I was in, there was at least another three cringing and attempting to convince the pretty girls at the next table he wasn't ‘with' us, per say. Likewise, his pitching up at the away end at The Stadium of Light last year was met with less universal claim than most observers seem to have imagined; the message boards were less ‘wahey!' and more ‘that's my bloody seat he's taking'.

We weren't impressed with the stunts, but kind hearted and generous folk that we are, we were prepared to overlook the more embarrassing antics when studying the bigger picture. Debt cleared, a semblance of stability installed, and the prospects of rounding around a team guided by a man we love, meant it was easy to pretend not to notice that a grown man was wearing a replica football shirt. And everybody missed the point. Lazy journalists handed their easy copy about dozy Geordies, Ashley thinking the fact that he lets us swear and tells us dirty jokes would make up for his systematic belittling of Keegan because we're all so bloody charmed by the man and his well wacky and hilarious antics.

Lessons learnt, though, we won't be that naive again and we move on. For one thing, I have stopped caring what any reporter thinks about me, my fellow supporters or my football club. I speak as somebody who held open a door for The Guardian's Louise Taylor recently in a spirited, if predictably futile, bid to prove that sometimes Newcastle United supporters can be people too so this isn't something that's going to be easy for me. I don't like when ill informed people get paid to write barely legible bile about Newcastle but what needs to be taken into account is that it doesn't matter, not really. Let them be what they're going to be, say what they're going to say. Our getting puffed up and indignant about it is a waste of our time. I can prove it too: say next week there's a dramatic U-turn and Keegan comes back and the entire world collapses in sheer mirth, how much would you actually care about their weak jokes and doom filled predictions? You wouldn't, would you? Their opinion is as irrelevant as me wanting Rex to win Big Brother this year.

And you hate Dennis Wise. Of course you do, you're not bloody stupid are you? The man has the pleasant and approachable demeanour of a Final Demand letter and sniffs around our club with the same grace usually exhibited by a drunken rugby player chatting up the barmaid at the end of the night. But, in relative terms, he could be here for the next ten years, with his shifty eyes, dragging us down to whatever level of mediocrity it is he and his idiot mates seemingly aspire to, and it still won't matter. When the proud history of this club is written up hundreds of years from now, he will be a speck, a blemish, barely a footnote. He's a movie of the week at best (except ten times more sinister than Kevin Spacey in ‘Seven'). Go on Dennis, play the Joey Barton card, see how much support you get from Callum Davidson.

And unless you're somebody who got your picture in the paper clasping your head in your hands in a painfully contrived display of devastation or throwing your shirt into the river (in which case, piss off and leave the rest of us alone please) then you, as a Newcastle United supporter, mean more to this club than Mike Ashley does or Dennis Wise does or, gulp, Kevin Keegan does. We all do (ooh, it's enough to make you feel all important, isn't it?). At the risk of sounding like a pre-prepared Alan Shearer sound bite, the supporters are the one constant and without us there is nothing.

So, it's no good sneering with your friends about the lads in their tracksuits and last season's away shirt taking their shoes off because they love Keegan. For all intents and purposes, for the sake of unity in the face of a baying nation who are desperate to label us as contemptible thicko Geordie scum anyway, that may as well be you, me or all of us. And yes, looking at it like that we look a bit silly, but, also, a few of us look quite handy, and if the rest of the country has a problem we'll bloody have the lot of them.