Do not fall into the opening day kneejerk trap when the transfer window is still open | OneFootball

First day of the season blues – we’ve all had them at some point.

This year, a lot of the big teams lost and looked some shade of poor. Others won and there was a draw at St James’ Park. Judgements were cast, people blamed or praised. Negative and positive predictions abounded. It’s that time of the year when all the optimism is punctured, fears are confirmed or success seems within reach. The result feels more significant than at almost any other point in the season. It seems to set a precedent but obviously it’s way too early to draw hard conclusions.

Watching Newcastle on Sunday reminded me of 47 years ago when I first went to St James’ Park in 1979 for the opening game of that season. Not that it was anything like it is now.

I was in town to prepare to go to the Polytechnic the following month. I bought Be Bop Deluxe’s Live In The Air Age! album from the Virgin Megastore, which felt very glamorous. The stadium and indeed the whole area surrounding it was profoundly different to how it is now. Dodgy-looking blokes sold fans Westlers hot dogs from filthy, insanitary white carts stored under the arches near the central station. People ate them with a beer hunger. They’d rightly be illegal now.

Newcastle University had some flats adjacent to the ground called Castle Leazes. It was the site of much decadence and generations of DNA exchanged. All demolished now I think.

The crowd was quite sparse but just as passionate as today. The ground didn’t loom over the town in quite the same way it does today but you could hear the crowd around town, then as now.

You just walked up. Tickets were £1.50 (about £8 today). They beat Oldham 3-2 in front of 19,000 people in the second division, with a penalty from Alan Shoulder in the sixth minute of injury time. We went in the Strawberry for a 33p pint of Exhibition. It was a small, unreconstructed old fellas’ boozer at the time, albeit one occupied by football fans on match days. It was always thick with smoke. The cream anaglypta walls were stained nicotine brown – oddly enough, the exact shade of Nigel Farage’s sickly-looking tan.

The Gallowgate End was an uncovered terrace, more like something from the 1950s. The whole ground was totally unrecognizable from the vast place today and very much poorer than the Ayresome Park that I was used to. If there was a black player on the pitch, in common with most grounds, they were always subjected to voluble racism, the likes of which you now routinely find on social media. Perfectly respectable people would think it funny to throw bananas at players. So things do get better. Or at least if we’re constantly vigilant.

I don’t recall anyone wearing Newcastle shirts. Then again, official merchandise was in its infancy. The club had a small unit in the Green Market but only sold pennants and programmes and the like, which I assume no-one wanted.

The vibes were good for the Geordies after that first game. But in actual fact, they finished ninth that season, after being top at Christmas too; they won only one of their last 16 games. Sunderland were promoted along with Birmingham and Leicester. So that first day last-gasp winner didn’t herald anything in May, despite the hope it engendered. In other words, good or bad, the first game tells you nothing about the nine months to come. Liverpool won their first five last year and look how that turned out.

Back in 1979, the current future at St James’ Park was absolutely unimaginable. The Toon selling players to Barcelona? A defender from Blyth at the World Cup? A Brazilian in midfield? Nah, getaway, bonnie lad.

Opening day post-mortems are always declared with certainty but are often overreactions and wide of the mark just because pre-season hope and expectation runs into harsh reality. The season is long and there is much to be endured yet. Even so, I recognise that the first result in August is always deeply felt and the temptation is to think it tells you nothing about the future. The transfer window hasn’t even closed