It was a must-win game, but United failed to find the key to goal again

They drew 0-0 with Portsmouth and threw away any real hope.

The talking had to end and the action begin but, sadly, it didn't.

All we got was huff and puff and eventually the harsh reality that Championship football looms large on the horizon.

Of course, Newcastle can still escape mathematically. But let's get real.

Never mind not knowing where the next win will come from we don't know where the next goal can be found.

Shearer realises the severe gravity of the situation now and privately it must shock.

He didn't know it was this bad or he would never have taken the job.

No amount of tub-thumping, of Churchillian speeches, can put right what is wrong right across the board.

Only a clear-out and the transfer market can do that.

Shearer has over lorded four matches which have yielded but two points out of 12 and produced a solitary goal.

Agony, death throes no less.

United haven't won at home since before Christmas.

That's four months and nine matches ago, so why should the Mags suddenly sweep away Middlesbrough and Fulham in a torrent of goals?

No, this side has no imagination, no confidence, no craft, no cutting edge and no hope.

Oh, and no Plan B for when Plan A doesn't work.

Shearer threw on three strikers from the start and all three missed decent chances.

Michael Owen, skipper and ace marksman who will net given a proper chance we're repeatedly told, failed to do so with the best opportunity of the game just after the hour, shooting weakly at his old England team-mate David James when clean through on his own.

That's a goal drought dating back to January.

Martins was dreadfully wasteful first-half when coolness was required, something he doesn't possess, and Viduka tapped a tame finish at James in the second.

By the end it might have been even worse with the last rites formally administered.

Peter Crouch was denied a penalty when Fabricio Coloccini rashly brought him down - Pompey boss Paul Hart was indignant and had a case - and eight minutes from time Richard Hughes rattled the right-hand post with a header from a corner as Coloccini offered no challenge and Steve Harper stood rooted to the spot.

At the final whistle chants of "We are staying up" echoed round a rapidly-emptying stadium, but they came from a tiny band of Pompey fans parked high in the rafters of St James's Park.

Hart stayed on the field to hug each and every one of his players. He knew the damage they had inflicted and what they had achieved.

For the final 10 minutes the contrast had been sharp and telling, Portsmouth growing in confidence and stroking the ball around while United's crew were dispirited and agony was etched on the faces of their supporters.

The pain was hard to bear, the realisation inevitable.

The unfairness of it all is that the people who it hits hardest are those who pay to be repeatedly let down.

United, it now appears, will keep their unwanted record of consistent failure.

Since they last won the league title in 1927 the Magpies have, believe it or not, played in the second tier of English football in every decade bar the 1950s and the current one.

Now in the final year of the 2000s they are hurtling towards relegation.

How the Geordies are born to suffer.