GLENN Roeder's office has barely been vacated, but his successor is already getting a taste of what life at Newcastle United will be like.

Supporters, starved of success for the best part of half-a-century, talk of the need to win trophies and compete in the Champions League.

Former players, ignoring a changed footballing landscape, describe the "unique demands" of managing the Magpies and claim that anything less than a top-four finish is unacceptable for a club the size of Newcastle.

And chairman Freddy Shepherd, wading through the logistics of a formal approach to Sam Allardyce, prepares for a formal press conference in which he will no doubt describe the Newcastle manager's job as "one of the biggest in the world" and cite Champions League qualification as the "minimum requirement" for next season.

Meanwhile, the reality of the situation in which Newcastle United, and the vast majority of their Premiership rivals, find themselves will be conveniently ignored amid the hyperbole.

Here are some basic facts that paint a slightly different picture of what Roeder's successor will inherit at St James' Park.

It is now four seasons since Newcastle finished in the top four of the Premier League, and eight years since they appeared in the final of a domestic cup competition.

Their recent European record is more impressive, although post-2004 their efforts have been consigned to the UEFA Cup rather than its more prestigious Champions League equivalent.

Such statistics would be worrying enough if they could be explained away by a succession of mistakes peculiar to Newcastle United.

Errors have undoubtedly been made since Sir Bobby Robson was hastily dismissed in 2004, but they cannot sufficiently explain why Newcastle are not the only club to have failed to achieve tangible success in the same period.

In the last three seasons, Everton are the only club to have broken Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal and Liverpool's stranglehold on the top four - and their fourth-place finish in 2005 was arguably a product of Liverpool's focus on winning the Champions League in the final month of the same season.

Were Newcastle to qualify for the Champions League under Allardyce or any other boss, their success would reverse a two-tier trend that has become signficantly more pronounced in the last three seasons.

To make matters worse in terms of unsustainable expectations outside of the top four, the leading domestic trophy tends to offer an opportunity for more disappointment, rather than a route to much-needed glory.

By the time Manchester United and Chelsea have contested this season's FA Cup final, only one of the last 16 victors will have come from outside the current big four - Everton again in 1995 - and only three of the last 14 finalists will have broken the top-four monopoly.

Like it or lump it, English football has become polarised and for all that they boast 52,000 crowds and pay wages of more than £100,000-a-week, Newcastle are part of the proletariat rather than the elite.

Talk of repeatedly finishing in the top four and challenging the likes of Barcelona and AC Milan for European supremacy is fanciful at best and deluded at worst.

The same applies for the likes of Tottenham, Blackburn and Middlesbrough, and is even true of clubs like Aston Villa and West Ham, who will benefit from significant cash investments from their new owners this summer.

Allardyce is believed to have left Bolton because he considered UEFA Cup qualification and a sixth-placed Premiership finish as the best he could possibly achieve at the Reebok Stadium.

Newcastle supporters would not be satisfied with such a performance - it might even be enough to get Allardyce the sack, given Shepherd's fondness for hiring and firing- so before agreeing to take over at St James' Park, he should really be asking himself whether he genuinely believes that a significant improvement is possible on Tyneside.

Sadly, all the signs suggest that it is not.

Sunderland supporters will no doubt be exhibiting a certain smugness when they settle down to watch Derby take on Southampton in their play-off semi-final on Saturday.

The Rams' fate is immaterial now that Sunderland have secured their Premiership place in style, but fans with short memories should cast their mind back to 2004, when Sunderland lost out to Crystal Palace despite finishing six points ahead of them in Division One.

This time the gap between third and sixth was even bigger - a whopping nine points - but Sunderland supporters should reflect that had it not been for Liam Miller's stoppage-time header in February and Ross Wallace's second-half winner last September, it would be their club, not Derbyheading to Southampton this weekend.

The Rams have been one of the three best clubs in the Championship all season. They deserve a place in the top-flight, even if the history books suggest they will not end up getting it.

John Armitt was yesterday charged with the task of overseeing the building of the venues and infrastructure for the London 2012 Olympics.

Given that he is currently the chief executive of Network Rail, one shudders to think what might happen in the next five years.

If the wrong type of rain falls on the East End of London in that time, the stadiums might not get built at all.