Newcastle will not have an open-top bus parade if they lose to Man Utd
Newcastle United will NOT hold an open-top bus parade if they fail to win the Carabao Cup, unlike in previous years when returning defeated from Wembley.
But we can reveal that, should Eddie Howe and his team end the club’s 54-year wait for silverware by beating Manchester United on Sunday, then they will show off the trophy to supporters.
A parade through the city will take place on Tuesday with the route still being planned.
However, the decision has been taken not to mark a loss with a similar tour of Newcastle’s streets.
That has been the tradition in years gone by and the players have been greeted by tens of thousands of supporters despite returning from the capital empty-handed.
It happened in 1974 following the FA Cup final defeat by Liverpool, and again in 1998 and 1999 after losses in the same competition to Arsenal and Manchester United respectively. But Howe and the current owners do not see value in celebrating such results.
Club legend Alan Shearer has spoken about how those parades felt in the late Nineties.
‘It was like, “Do we really have to do a parade the next day?”. Just cancel it, we haven’t got an FA Cup to show off,’ he told the BBC. ‘We did an open-top bus parade after being beaten twice in the Cup finals and you think, “How f*****g stupid is this?”.
‘But it just shows how desperate Newcastle fans are for success, because there were hundreds of thousands of fans from Gosforth Park to the Civic Centre. It was unbelievable. Absolutely outrageous. Then we had to say thanks at the Civic Centre. It was embarrassing.’
