Hindsight, is a wonderful thing in football but in a week when former Newcastle United coach John Carver admitted he predicted the slippery slope endured by Toon fans in the four years since Sir Bobby Robson left the club, there can be no greater time for the current regime at St James's Park to learn from mistakes made in the past.
During his time at Barcelona, Sir Bobby had been told he wouldn't be the manager of the Nou Camp club for the 1997/98 season.
Back then Louis van Gaal moved into the dugout and Sir Bobby moved upstairs (a role he later described as the best paid scout in Europe) but sacking the former England manager never crossed anybody's mind at Barca.
Why on the earth did Newcastle not do something similar?
OK, the team was looking a little jaded in his final full season in 2003/04 - but they did finish FIFTH.
At that time surely using Robson's experience to pick a new manager to work alongside the coaching staff already familiar with the playing staff might have been a better idea.
Instead the Toon board moaned amongst themselves and then fired Robson in August the next year, remember the ludicrous annual sacking (Ruud Gullit, Kenny Dalglish as well) of a United boss when most people were still sporting a sun tan?
No wonder this club has suffered.
We talk about continuity but Sam Allardyce did go the journey in January didn't he?
That said, this wasn't Mike Ashley's idea and it was pretty obvious to anybody that Big Sam's long ball and ProZone fascination was taking Newcastle to one place and one place only - the Championship.
Now though with Kevin Keegan back at the helm and still hopefully here to complete unfinished business, perhaps we will see KK at least be allowed to see out his contract.
This week on Blog on The Tyne we've already heard fans talk about expectations, and a steady rise up the league is what people are expecting plus maybe a good go in the cups.
The structure of the club is certainly different these days and not many would have predicted Dennis Wise as the director of football and working with KK.
But let's not get carried away, no manager can be in two places at once and if Wise and his team of Jeff Vetere and Tony Jimenez are employed to sift through a list of talent around the globe then we'll have to give it a chance to work.
Should Newcastle have four or five quality signings come the first game of the season or the last day of the August transfer window, can we complain?
Stability is what Newcastle need right now, not panic decisions to get rid of bosses too early or at the wrong time.
We've already tumbled down the pecking order in the Premier League in the last four years, stupid decisions and a further fall, will only lead to one thing...
WHAT DO YOU THINK?
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