Arsenal v Newcastle United, 24/Apr/26, KO: 5:30 pm, The Emirates, Premier League. One sunny Saturday afternoon in early September 1992, KK’s lads were away at Bristol Rovers. Football was changing. For one thing, United were winning, which really was a novelty for a teenager whose first match had been five years earlier and who had only known ever darkening gloom.I'd been to the first three home games that season and also to the Baseball Ground. The latter involved a catastrophically hungover drive down, which delivered delicious revenge for the heroic, eight-man, seat-throwing, pride-fuelled, end-of-days visit at the end of the previous season - a match which, incidentally, remains my all-time favourite away trip. When you realise we lost 4-1, you start to understand something about my deeply damaged psyche. As if Oh Ah Franzie Carr standing one up at the far post for the winner in the return at Derby wasn't proof enough, Clarkie walking it in against Luton after what my memory tells me was a Cruyff-era total football passing move persuaded me that something had very definitely changed.For another thing, a curious new rule had been introduced that season - goalkeepers were now banned from picking up the ball when it was passed back to them. The “backpass rule” acquired a mythical significance, a bit like “three points for a win”. The established laws of the known universe had been shifted. Most excitingly, it meant the occasional madcap spectacle of an indirect free kick on the six-yard line with the entire opposition team desperately lined up across the goalline. Step forward Kevin Sheedy (he of the archetypal “cultured left foot") who lashed the ball home at Twerton Park to put us one up against Bristol Rovers. Some memories are so steeped in golden nostalgia that the sheer recollection spreads warmth from your heart. I was away for the weekend and the radio commentary from Bath on Sheedy’s goal is one such moment. As we notched win number five in an opening run of eleven in a row, it felt as though the world had been made anew, and it was a happy place. Anything was possible.Into this heady mix, I remember happening that same afternoon across the newspaper serialisation of a new book. A football book. It was an intelligent, funny, moving, life-affirming memoir of what it meant to be a football fan. You mean other people feel this way too? Other people's lives are also defined entirely by the particular emotional rhythm of football? This wasn't said in polite company, not in the wake of Thatcher's war to brand and exclude us.I'd never read anything like it. I was transfixed. It was Nick Hornby's Fever Pitch.With hindsight, of course, there was a price to pay. Nothing would be the same again, and not entirely in a good way. Hornby's book was part of a popularisation and gentrification of football that swept aside the old, and it's not a coincidence that this change originated with Arsenal, the centre of gravity of the football media and chattering classes. Terrace culture would never be the same again, not least because terraces would never be again.Hillsborough was just three years behind us, and the Taylor Report was revolutionising what it meant to go to the match - physically, economically, and socially. A year after that, Des Lynam, some lacrymose Geordie lad, and Pavarotti had somehow turned the shittest football tournament ever into a national cultural turning-point (now Spain in 1982, that was something to really get excited about). Oh and now Sky were claiming to have invented a whole new sport from scratch.It all feels like a long time ago.Scarcely believably, today will be the first time I've been to Arsenal since those years - November 1993: 2-1L (Wright 15”, Smith 60”; Beardsley 61”). So perhaps it's understandable that my mind has somehow wandered its way back to Nick Hornby and Fever Pitch. In many ways, the Emirates as a stadium - or at least our perception of it - symbolises everything that has changed in the last 34 years since we were winning at a tiny non-league ground in the South West of England. Sanitised, corporatised, shiny but soulless. We don't even question that we use the name of a business as the name of a football ground. It has become completely normalised.The North London library isn't an outlier. Apart from certain individual games, all home grounds are relatively quiet these days. Seats, ticket prices, hospitality areas, and the one-off visitors beloved of the money men see to that. Gentrification has done its job. Most of the noise seems to come from performative social media idiots these days.But not everything is different. Hornby's book told the story of a life structured by football matches, where personal identity is intricately and ludicrously bound up in the fate of your football club. Far too much so to be healthy. Not nearly enough to ever be satisfied. Where personal triumph and loss are always measured against the fixture list. Where community and belonging come from an irrational relationship with a football team.If you're reading this, then chances are the same holds for you. It is our privilege and joy, our curse and misery. It endures beyond the comings and goings of owners and executives, players, and managers. It endures across success and failure. Why else would anyone be travelling to stand in the away end today? That's true faith. Matthew Philpotts Match Preview True Faith - Independent NUFC FanzineTF Preview - Arsenal (a), 25 April 2026Premiership Game 34 (W12 D6 L15 – 14th): Season 2025-2026…Read morea day ago · 3 likes · True FaithThru Black & White Eyes True Faith - Independent NUFC FanzineTHRU BLACK & WHITE EYES - Breaking Bad - 21/April/26. For a few moments after Osula’s equaliser I thought we had it in us to maybe go on and beat Bournemouth. Such a win would’ve been a travesty and hardly deserved but desperate times and all of that …Read more4 days ago · 38 likes · 21 comments · Michael MartinTF You Tube Match Report True Faith - Independent NUFC FanzineTF Player Ratings: Newcastle 1-2 BournemouthRamsdale 5 - Probably not at fault for either of the goals. Definitely didn’t stop any others though. A bit meh. Which makes him one of of our better players today. Is he better than Pope is, or Dubs was? No. Should we extend his loan? Don’t care…Read more6 days ago · 25 likes · 29 comments · Yousef HatemReading List I like the look of this … in short it is the story of a gadgie from Sheffield who buys East Stirlingshire Football Club for reasons only he can explain (part of the purpose of the book obviously) and thereafter the tale of what transpires between him and a Scottish club, with all due respect, not known for its glamour or glory. Click on the above image if you’re interested in buying the book. J’Accuse - Parts 1-3 Part 1 True Faith - Independent NUFC FanzineThe Blame Game #1 - Owners and DirectorsHow on earth did it come to this? My overwhelming emotion on Sunday wasn't anger, but just sadness. If it ends this way, and increasingly a summer parting of the ways seems inevitable, then what a desperately sad state of affairs…Read more9 days ago · 29 likes · 48 comments · True FaithPart 2 True Faith - Independent NUFC FanzineThe Blame Game #2 - The PlayersThe current malaise at Newcastle United is, obviously, not due to a single cause. Football is a team sport, and football clubs are collective endeavours…Read more3 days ago · 33 likes · 30 comments · Yousef HatemPart 3 True Faith - Independent NUFC FanzineBlame Game #3 - The ManagerSo it falls to me - possibly due to views expressed on the podcast and in further writing here - to discus whether blame should lie with a specific person within the organisation that now calls itself Newcastle United. I understand that some people will vehemently disagree with me and will be feel the idea that any criticism of the manager is unfounded…Read more2 days ago · 6 likes · 2 comments · True FaithTF Review True Faith - Independent NUFC FanzineReview - The Football Heritage Podcast Thanks for reading True Faith - The Alternative View of Newcastle United since 1999. All of our written material is advert free and provided FREE to our fellow Mags. Subscribe for nowt…Read more10 days ago · 12 likes · 1 comment · True FaithFootball stickers of Tyneside and beyond Bergamo, Italy. Join Newcastle United Supporters TrustJoin Newcastle United’s only members based, democratic, supporters representative association and become active in the issues that matter to Mags and fans across the country. Click on the image for more information.Donate to Wor FlagsThey do us proud every season and in every game but they can only do it with our support. Keep the flags flying and donate to Wor Flags - click hereDonate to the Newcastle United Fans FoodbankDonate to the Newcastle United Fans Foodbank and support local people in need - click here The Special is dedicated to the memory of our dear friend and ally Glenn Ashcroft.Art work by Peter Willis.Michael Martin - @tfMick1892.bsky.social