They played the Sixties hit Just Like Eddie in the seconds before kick-off.
Perhaps the stadium DJ had not considered the lyrics, ‘Whenever you're sad, whenever you're blue, whenever your troubles are heavy’. Then again, he's been here a long time, so maybe he had.
How appropriate those words felt just 10 minutes later when Ciaran Clark’s brainless indiscretion reduced Newcastle to 10 men. Eddie Howe looked stunned, even instructing his centre-back to remain on the field in the vain hope of a VAR reversal.
But this has long been a football club prone to calamity.