Tomorrow’s relegation decider marks the end of Alan Shearer’s current eight-match spell in charge of Newcastle. Chief sports writer Scott Wilson met the Magpies manager yesterday and discovered just what Premier League survival would mean to him.

AFTER seven-and-a-half emotional weeks in charge of Newcastle United, it was the moment when Alan Shearer’s composure finally snapped.

“There’s obviously a lot of excitement around these games,” said a television interviewer, during Shearer’s final press conference ahead of tomorrow’s relegation denouement. “Do you sometimes feel that’s too much? They’re only football matches at the end of the day, aren’t they?”

“They’re only football matches are they,” replied the Magpies manager. Then, after a lengthy and theatrical pause, he added: “Is that all, is it?”

Forty-eight hours away from one of the biggest games in Newcastle’s postwar history, Shearer’s sense of timing betrayed an equally well-honed sense of perspective.

For all that he has been involved in World Cup finals and Premier League titles, he has never experienced anything quite like this.

On the one hand, tomorrow’s game at Aston Villa is just another football match. Even if Newcastle lose, and are therefore relegated to the Championship, life will go on.

But to Shearer, a passionate Newcastle supporter who has devoted so much of his life to the black-and-white cause, nothing will quite be the same again.

He will be the man who was unable to save his city.

Unable to stop the fire sale of players that would almost certainly ensue. Powerless to prevent the job losses and redundancies that tend to accompany relegation.

Incapable of consoling the thousands of supporters who invested so much faith in him two months ago.

There are others, far more culpable than Shearer, who will be called to account if Newcastle fail to secure their Premier League status tomorrow afternoon.

But none will feel the loss as keenly as the man who could not bring himself to stand and do nothing as the mistakes of previous eras began to take their terrible toll.

“I know what this football club is, what it means to the people,” said Shearer, who will discuss his own future in the aftermath of tomorrow’s game amid heightened speculation that he will turn his initial eightmatch arrangement into a permanent managerial deal.

“You know what it means to me – that is why I came back.

“Iain (Dowie) has said to me, ‘Now I know why you turned down Manchester United’. Coming up here, listening to people, seeing what it means to them, seeing the size of the football club – now I think he fully appreciates what all of this means.

“But we all know the implications (of relegation).

I know, the players know, and people around the city know what it means for this football club to be in the Premier League.

“It’s massive. We’re aware of the financial consequences, but it’s not only that, you’re talking about the staff who you don’t know at this football club – tea ladies and people like that, they’ll lose their jobs as well. We’re thinking about all of that.”

Thinking about it – but not regarding it as inevitable.

Throughout his two-month reign as Newcastle manager, Shearer’s faith in his side’s survival prospects has never wavered.

Other managers might laugh off the threat of relegation through a sense of duty, but as in his playing career, Shearer the manager wears his heart on his sleeve.

When he says he believes Newcastle will stay up tomorrow, he speaks with an emotion and power that says he means it.

The following is a ridiculous notion, but it is impossible to escape it all the same. If only he was taking on Aston Villa instead of some of the serial under-achievers who have failed so often this season.

“I am totally convinced we will get out of this,” said Shearer, with a conviction that has been sorrowfully lacking in so many of his players in recent months.

“We know what’s at stake, we know what’s riding on it and I’m confident we can go there and give our supporters something to shout about.

“It’s bigger than a cup final, a hell of a lot bigger than a cup final, and I’m sure it will be nervewracking at times. But I’m convinced there will be twists and turns.

“It will change by the minute. At one stage someone will be down, at another someone else will be up. But what matters is that come ten to six, we’re the ones staying in the Premier League. I honestly believe that is what will happen.”

Then, Shearer can either disappear into the sunset or begin to plan for his first full season in the top-flight.

When he describes the emotions that have accompanied his successes and defeats since replacing Joe Kinnear, he speaks with the frenzy of an addict craving yet another hit. Win or lose tomorrow, it is already all but impossible to imagine him walking away.

Management has consumed him, to the extent that he was forced to break off his preparations for the trip to Villa Park in order to play a nine-hole game of golf with Dowie.

“We’d watched videos and looked at everything, and I just thought ‘Look, we can’t do any more on this – we have to go out and do something’,” he said. “So, for two hours, we took our frustrations out on a golf ball.”

Ever the competitor, Shearer won. With the fate of a football club in his hands, what he wouldn’t give for a similar result tomorrow.