Joe Kinnear said that Kevin Keegan and Alan Shearer were waiting in the wings to step in when the new consortium buys the club sometime during next month.
With a crowd 7,000 below capacity ... even some season ticket holders couldn't face the prospect of six weeks with "Mr Route One".
By half-time the chants for Keegan and Shearer had diminished and the near 45,000 in St James Park had been subjected to yet another inept display by a side lacking in leadership.
There was an improvement after the interval but after yet another defeat things couldn't get any worse for supporters.
Well not quite.
Unfortunately, Shearer on Match of the Day denied he had been in contact with anyone about a return in any management capacity, and then Terry Venables told Radio Five Live he had been informed the club might still not be sold by the end of the year. Slightly different from the version relayed to Kinnear when he was offered the chanced to make a highly unpredictable return to topflight management.
The former Wimbledon boss could therefore still be at St James' Park through the January transfer window and he is adamant that Ashley will not be investing on the playing side.
As The Mail reports: "The news for fans just keeps getting better and better.
"On the pitch they currently have the (second) worst side in the Premier League. Off the pitch they appear to have the worst run club in Britain."
Newcastle are reliant on Michael Owen digging us out of a hole very week, but I think we all know he is NOT Kinnear's type of skipper.
Owen is not a born leader like Vinnie Jones.
He plays football (very well actually) and doesn't lead by kicking lumps out of anyone within kicking range; grapping star internationals by the nuts; or getting sent off 4 seconds after the kick-off (like Jones did in his Sheff Utd days).
Will Kinnear stick with Owen as skipper? Your guess is as good as mine.
Kinnear: "He (Owen) is a quality player, no question about that.
"With the experience he has got he has seen it and done it. I would like to get similar players around him.
"He is a Newcastle legend, England legend and Liverpool legend.
"No reason why he won't continue to be my captain. He is a very good voice in the dressing room."
However, the voice in the dressing room at half-time on Saturday belonged to Kinnear.
He wasn't happy with what he saw and made sure the players knew about it - no matter how many didn't even know who he was.