Premier League preview No11: Newcastle United

Guardian writers' prediction 14th (This is not Louise Taylor's prediction, but the average of our writers' tips)

Last season's position 12th

Odds on winning title 1,000-1

Graeme Souness likened it to a banana republic, Jermaine Jenas simply saw a glorified goldfish bowl and Sir Bobby Robson believed the place was God's little acre.

While often seeming part of a parallel football universe, Newcastle United provokes a host of contrasting emotions but on Saturday all such sentiments were simply drowned out. It was so wet on Tyneside that a farcically puddle-studded friendly against Fiorentina at St James' Park played amid thunder, lightning and torrential rain was abandoned after 64 minutes with no goals and the pitch waterlogged.

Such apocalyptic conditions over Gallowgate following a difficult summer seemed in tune with the disgruntlement of fans fed up with waiting for the club to become synonymous with glory rather than self-destructive gossip.

Due to an amalgam of geographical isolation, a position at the heart of a compact city and the attendant reality that star players inevitably become very big fish in Tyneside's small pond, Newcastle consistently punches way above its weight in the soap opera stakes. Nothing if not contemporary, the latest episode revolves around Joey Barton's use of Twitter not only to quote George Orwell and George Washington but to publicise growing pique with the board.

Upset by its decision to withdraw a long-standing contract offer, the midfielder highlighted Newcastle's failure to reinvest the £35m fee received for Andy Carroll from Liverpool in January before hinting at a latent dressing-room mutiny.

When Barton then flipped at the double slight of Shola Ameobi captaining Newcastle in a friendly at Leeds and Yohan Cabaye, the France international signed from Lille, delivering dead balls, he swiftly found himself in receipt of a free transfer and placed in training-ground quarantine.

Once it became apparent he was bereft of suitors, a tentative truce beckoned. Deep down a player best deployed wide on the right may be relieved; he is surely far too self-absorbed to cope with lesser-light status at a leading club.

Still excluded from the squad, Barton did not feature on Saturday. "We're all taking a deep breath before we see where we go with Joey," said the Newcastle manager, Alan Pardew. Meanwhile Barton's old mucker, Kevin Nolan, was another notable absentee, the team's erstwhile captain having departed for West Ham once it became clear Mike Ashley, Newcastle's owner, would not grant him a lucrative, lengthy contract extension.

Squad conspiracy theorists suggest the latter's exit was part of a concerted effort to disband the former all powerful 'players' committee' which, headed by Nolan and also including Steve Harper and Alan Smith, 'ran' the locker room under Chris Hughton's management.

Not that Nolan would necessarily have been an automatic choice in a team augmented by the recent arrivals of Cabaye – impressive against Fiorentina – the winger Sylvain Marveaux, a free transfer from Rennes, and the former West Ham striker Demba Ba. Like the much coveted Cheick Tioté and Hatem Ben Arfa, that trio were identified by Newcastle's highly regarded scout Graham Carr.

Anxious to instil a purist passing philosophy, Pardew trusts that Cabaye's playmaking, allied to Ben Arfa's imaginative link play, will eventually engender a more fluid, fluent Newcastle. However, the latter's long-awaited comeback from a broken leg has been delayed indefinitely by ankle trouble. Equally ominously the manager seems unlikely to be handed much of the Carroll cash.

Frustration bubbles beneath a diplomatic managerial public face but is tempered by the bigger arithmetical picture. Although Ashley has done much to make supporters cringe since taking Newcastle over in 2007, the sportswear magnate had spent £286m by this summer buying and then keeping the club afloat.

A former county squash coach, the reclusive Ashley arguably resembles an outsize hybrid of Willie Walsh and Arsène Wenger. Like the former British Airways chief executive he has long dreamed of presiding over a less generously remunerated, yet increasingly efficient crew, and, à la Wenger, he envisages constructing a vibrant young, largely home-produced, frequently foreign-born team that is big on re-sale value.

"Mike has made it quite clear this club needs to wipe its nose," says Pardew, who is acutely aware of player unhappiness at Ashley's efforts to curtail St James' once generous bonus culture. "We can't invest above our income. We can't compete with Manchester City.

"It makes things very, very difficult. The problem is that where we are financially means it's hard to fulfil the expectations of fans who a few years ago watched European football here."

It seems disillusion has spread to the inner sanctum. "We need a couple of new faces, fast," acknowledges Pardew, currently close to completing a £3m deal for Manchester United's winger Gabriel Obertan. "Physically the players are in better shape than last year but mentally they're not."

Unable to shatter spending records by signing latter-day Alan Shearers, he must trust Carr's bargain spotting judgment. The Northumberland-born Carr played and managed on the lower division circuit before David Pleat got him scouting for Tottenham.

Having effectively replaced Dennis Wise on Tyneside his influential recruitment input frees Pardew to concentrate on reviving the bright managerial promise he displayed at Reading and West Ham by burnishing unpolished diamonds on the training pitches newly warmed by undersoil heating.

The sometimes harsh Geordie climate has stripped the remotest hint of hubris from a manager who, wisely, declines to make any rash pledges. "It's difficult for me to give a message to Newcastle fans," Pardew says. "They've had too many broken promises."