The end was inevitable, even Steve Bruce knew that. Yet, for all this, it is hard to imagine a sadder sacking in football this season than the one that took place at Newcastle on Wednesday.
It does not matter who the club gets now. Paulo Fonseca, Eddie Howe, Lucien Favre, even Steven Gerrard. Newcastle will never mean to any of them what it meant to Bruce. He was a local man, an attribute some still pretend is valued around those parts.
No, he didn't play his football up there, but neither did Sir Bobby Robson, who had been 49 years in the game as a player and manager before he took a job farther north than Birmingham.