Football FanCast columnist Chris Mackin feels that there is strange feeling of déjà vu around his beloved Newcastle United.

I'm like Joe Kinnear: I keep missing Newcastle United goals. When Xsico scored his, perhaps understandably, unheralded debut goal against Hull City, I was long involved in lengthy discourse on how many levels better than football ‘The Wire' is and couldn't be bothered to turn my head to see what all the fuss was about. Michael Owen's strike against Spurs in the league cup happened when I was already stomping away from the ground in a huff like a big daft girl and his penalty against Blackburn took place as I stood in the Leazes corner concourse bitterly contemplating if I was able to put myself through another forty five minutes of it all.

And so it was that I was aboard the Kings Cross to Central Station when first Steven Taylor and then Damien Duff secured a comeback from 2-0 down at Goodison to achieve a draw which has been described by the restrained as ‘credible' and, by the more excitable elements of our local press, as ‘heroic'.

Missing the first half in favour of staring glumly at an i-pod long drained of power and having a stranger's elbow lodged invasively in my ribcage and only catching the last half hour gave me a peculiar perspective on Joe Kinnear's first game in charge of Newcastle United and probably explains why I've spent this last week looking vague and vacant when various playing personal, journalists and Joe himself explained to me just how bloody wonderful the entire ‘comeback' was and how we were privileged to watch such an accomplished second half performance.

Because I watched most of the second half and found the whole thing grindingly depressing; our horrible kits, all the pinged long balls, Guthrie's snarling belligerence. I suddenly realised how familiar this was, how many times we seen it before, with Dalglish and Gullit and Roeder and Allardyce. All those awful Sunday afternoon games at places like Charlton and West Ham, where the sky just seems impossibly grey and Andy Gray's chortling at you and our defence begins to resemble a bumbling company spokesman on Mark Thomas' ‘Dispatches', with the ball playing the role of a loaded question about dubious child labour policies. And the defence didn't play that badly, really, but, like Shay Given- who may as well turn up to mind our goal anxiously loosening his club tie and having a panic attack such is the pressure involved in the task- you're always painfully aware that they're just about to.

And what bugged me most was thinking back to Old Trafford on the first Sunday and all that sunny optimism. And how, in couple of almost artfully moronic moves, Mike and the boys have managed to plunge us right back where we seem to be doomed to remain marooned until the end of time: hollow and unfulfilling tedious mediocrity, grim Sundays on sky and meek surrenders at home, where a point at an awful looking Everton is cause to unfurl the bunting. Yippidity do dah. And this, right there, is why the game at Goodison was so awful: all in all, it was a ‘decent point.' Jesus.

Joe Kinnear's problem isn't that he's not Kevin Keegan, it's that he is all the other idiots we seen a million times before, all prickly demeanour and ‘no fannying about,' he's also added his own little twist to the role- he's a bit of a ‘character'.

And, hey, we all love a bit of a foul mouthed press conference. Except, perhaps, when it's a press conference as embarrassingly misguided to centre on Simon Bird, a journalist who constantly gives Newcastle positive copy; or when it's as needlessly provocative as to give writers like Louise Sodding Taylor more opportunities to take a break from wistfully asking her magic 8 ball if Roy will ever love her like she loves him ("Reply hazy, ask again later"); or when it's as ham fistedly selective as to ignore the media's recent record of being sickeningly and conclusively right in all their doomsday predictions for this club. Factors like these tend to rob the moment of its cavalier and anarchic shine and tend to make our manger look less like man of the people telling it how it is and more like a bellowing and incoherent tosser howling impotently at the moon.

And if all this wasn't bad enough, we have Newcastle supporters, doing their best Bannatyne, discussing the speculated buyers in terms of long term fiscal strategy and the most sensible direction to go in the face of mounting financial uncertainty. All very prudent, of course- and how like Newcastle United to be hunting for moneyed and carefree investors when by next week they'll all be swapping power lunches at Trump Towers for the driest spot underneath a London cash point- but business speak like this guaranteed to have me curling up by the nearest lamp post waiting to die.

But here we are, and we make do. And, as the game at Sunderland lingers over us like the spectre of death itself, what else are we supposed to do with our weekends? ‘The Wire' finished a couple of weeks ago and every other sport is boring and rubbish, so we ride it out together and who knows what tomorrow brings. Personally, I can't stop thinking about Leeds: is it me or do they actually look like they're enjoying themselves nowadays?