Newcastle United's attack on The Telegraph leaves world holding its breath - Telegraph.co.uk

But where the threats of Downing Street are lightly brushed off, exclusion from St James’ Park is a concern of a very different order. Especially so with as many as one Premier League game to be played there before the season is out.

Next season, of course, there may be no Premier League fixtures at all. With Newcastle ’s form in freefall, there is a fair chance of relegation.

One both understands the strain on Llambias, and applauds the dignity with which he is handling it.

The story which so distressed concerned a dressing-room schism. Armed with as few as four independent sources, three within the club, Luke reported that elements in the squad suspect the French contingent of a laissez-faire approach to the prospect of the drop, and of undermining their manager Alan Pardew.

Luke was accused of false rumour-mongering, and a solicitor’s letter was sent demanding an apology and the report’s removal from the website. I have to tell you that no such undertakings have been offered, and that consequently this newspaper is at war with Newcastle United.

How long it will endure is unknowable, though we expect it to be over long before Christmas. Perhaps a precedent will be helpful. In 2007, after a sequence of columns gently questioning his competence, Tottenham Hotspur’s hyper-cerebral Chairman Daniel Levy (he took a Cambridge First in the legendarily demanding discipline of Land Economy) imposed an identically draconian ban on me and the London Evening Standard.

Almost six years later, the residual post-traumatic stress makes it tough to write about this episode. On its own, the memory of going to White Hart Lane in a burka, to avoid detection by the SWAT teams posted at every turnstile, necessitates a medicinal nip of Famous Grouse before I can continue.

Having swigged, I can report that the Levy fatwa was greeted with a level of ridicule which, though I found it unseemly, persuaded Levy to abandon it after a few weeks. The result, I like to think, was an honourable draw, and there has not been an angry word – or indeed any word – between us since.

Fanciful as this may seem while we remain enveloped by the fog of war, I have hopes that the present dispute will have an even happier outcome. The bonding power of the siege mentality on a divided dressing room is well known, and if Pardew can persuade his players, French and otherwise, that they are all victims of the most wicked Telegraph persecution, it could prove their salvation.

In that event, I trust hostilities will be suspended, and the world will breathe its loudest collective sigh of relief since Khrushchev removed his warheads from Cuba. One small request, finally, should this come to pass.

The next time Llambias and his friend and chairman, Mike Ashley, delight the Toon army by renaming the ground, in succession to the romantic if brief flirtation with the “Sports Direct Arena”, they should repay the debt by calling it the Luke Edwards Freedom of Speech Stadium.