“It wasn’t that they’d started poorly, it was a realisation dawning on me that we were hitting a ceiling. “I didn’t think I’d ever give up but something just clicked after the first 10 games of last season,” she explains. Stephanie Birkett at a Newcastle game calling for Rafa Benitez to stay On Sunday, for the first time since 2007 she’ll not be there. Stephanie Birkett’s seat will also be empty after she took the decision last season not to renew. No-one knows how many will stay away but Mr Bell is not alone. It should not be like this but the chasm between some fans and the club’s ownership that has widened with almost every passing year under Ashley is now too big a bridge for some fans to cross on Sunday. “Now that he’s gone we’re back to being Mike Ashley’s football club and why should I support that?” “Rafa Benitez represented hope,” Bryan says. The war for hearts and minds feels like another. The battle in the Premier League is one front for United. “It’ll feel pretty numb, to be honest,” he admits of the prospect of missing the one thing he’s built his week around since he was 14.Īfter a summer unlike any other at Newcastle, it is what the supporters do next which is the intriguing sub-plot to Sunday’s season opener against Arsenal. On Sunday, United will kick off a new season with the visit of one of the Premier League’s blue riband sides and he won’t be there. The only home games he’s missed over two decades have been for the occasional family holiday and when Heidi was born – but even then it was a close-run thing. It was only Wolves in the Championship, but 20 years of loyalty is hard-wired. Bryan Bell nearly missed the birth of his daughter because Newcastle United were playing at home.
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