Happy Anniversary. The calamities descended on Kenny Dalglish this week. Not the real traumas of a Heysel or Hillsborough, but the synthetic disaster of a dream having to be placed on hold.

There was no cake at his anniversary press conference on Wednesday, but news of another sale (Faustino Asprilla) and a rare eruption of barked defiance in Dalglish's unreconstructed Glaswegian.

All part of the problem, his critics say: Newcastle's manager should stand up for himself more often and demand that the Plc stump up for new troops.

All part of the master plan, say his allies. Not that the 2,200strong Newcastle United Distant Supporters Union would believe it. From safe havens as far away as America and Australia, the wiseguys are telling him that he has to go.

Dalglish is three days into his second year as Kevin Keegan's successor and is still picking up the Messiah's tabs. Newcastle were 3-1 second-favourites to win the title at the start of the season, but are now only 16-1 to go down. They have lost six of their last eight league games and are out of the Champions' League and CocaCola Cup.

Andy Cole, another Newcastle reject, is scoring in lorry-loads for Manchester United. Les Ferdinand, David Ginola, Peter Beardsley, Darren Huckerby, Paul Kitson and now Asprilla have all been sold either by Keegan or Dalglish, leaving the club with too few bums to fill the available seats on the Champions' League subs' bench.

In the "now-obsessed" lexicon of Premiership football, Newcastle and Dalglish are dropping from the firmament where Keegan and Sir John Hall put them, the money and terrace spirit gone, the accountants and distant City institutions all powerful. From former Irish international Mark Lawrenson, an old Anfield ally of Dalglish's and a former defensive coach at Newcastle, comes a brighter, but still tough summation of the recriminations swirling around Tyneside.

"Three wins and they're in the top eight," Lawrenson said yesterday. "I'm not being disrespectful to teams like Leeds and Derby, but you're not telling me that Newcastle with Shearer back aren't better than sides like that. I still believe they'll finish in the top six with Shearer back, but they do need the financial constraints lifting."

Ah, the constraints. The Saville Row strait-jacket put on by the City after flotation. The suspicion that Dalglish is simply choosing to suffer in dignified silence - taking it like a man - is popular among his admirers.

Harder to explain is his increasingly emotional and erratic behaviour. Why did a man who hates even grunting at local football scribes agree to take on the BBC's notoriously confrontative Jeremy Paxman over the Stevenage FA Cup affair? Why did he allow himself to become embroiled in it in the first place? Is his increasing grumpiness indicative of some deeper psychic rupture?

As Dalglish has won championships with Liverpool and Blackburn, and forced Newcastle up from fourth to second in 21 games after assuming command last season, it may be thought absurdly premature to argue that both he and a £180 million company are collapsing under the weight of a few bad results and a vexing run of injuries.

This is still the team, after all, who were 3-0 up in 48 minutes against Barcelona at home. The most pressing issue now is how rapidly Dalglish will deconstruct the remains of the Keegan era and how much money he will be given to do it.

A surplus of £11.5 million on his transfer dealings suggests one of two things. Either Dalglish is dismantling Keegan's team and assembling his own war chest or he is carrying out the plc's assetstripping. Unlikely.

"I know they've been looking all across Europe at players - they've got people week in, week out scouting everywhere - and I can't believe they haven't found players they want to buy," says Lawrenson.

"Everybody in the North-east knows that this is a club which has always been pretty free-spending, and people can't understand why they haven't gone out and bought somebody to play up front. Kenny's argument might be that they can't find anyone who's better than the players they've got - but, really, they've got nobody. Ian Rush's footballing brain still works, but his legs have gone at this level.

"It's always been a club that doesn't worry about how much things cost. The whole financial package for Shearer was put together in about three hours. For a football team to work properly these days, there needs to be 18 or 20 good players in the squad to get self-motivation. You need that, and Newcastle haven't got it.

"They're talking about increasing the capacity at St James' by 15,000, which will cost them £42 million. I don't know about you, but I don't think that'll make much difference. They'd have been better off signing a striker to keep the team going."

In recent weeks, Dalglish has been linked with Everton's Gary Speed, Sheffield United's Greek right-back Vassilis Borbokis, Callum Davidson, a defender with St Johnstone, and the West Brom and Republic of Ireland winger Kevin Kilbane.

In the longer-term, he knows he must halt the drain of footballing talent from one of football's most richly-stocked regions. Lawrenson believes that the appointment of Alan Irvine as youth development director proves that Dalglish is serious about correcting the jerrybuilding of the Keegan regime.

"I think that by the start of next season, the number of players signed by Kevin Keegan will be minimal," Lawrenson says. "Albert, for instance, will go back to Belgium or the Netherlands. Stuart Pearce has been a good acquisition, though he's had his problems with fitness, and so has Allesandro Pistone, whose best position is in the middle. He looks an excellent player there. I think Steve Watson may end up at centre-half, too.

"Most of the transfer deals have actually been good business. Les Ferdinand fetched a lot of money for a player whose first touch wasn't the best. Lee Clark lacked a yard of pace to be a really topclass player and Elliot tended to have two or three good games and then be average for two or three others. "The appointment of Alan Irvine is significant. He's very highly thought of by Kenny. They've got four teams now, including the reserves. But all that won't show for five or 10 years."

Newcastle old boy Chris Waddle, now manager of Burnley said yesterday: "Once he gets the two strikers back, I'm sure they'll start to climb the league, and they've still got a good chance of getting into Europe. Then next season he can add a few players and really go for it."

Dalglish has had one anniversary present this month. Shearer's return - at least a month ahead of schedule - is imminent. The sight of him skipping on to the turf at St James' will quell many of the more rampantly pessimistic judgments taking hold among Newcastle fans.

"The Shearer situation is interesting. When he had his knee injury, Kenny made him wait nearly six weeks between the day he said he was ready and when he actually played," Lawrenson says. "He wanted to make sure he was sound again." But even here there are reservations. "The accumulation of injuries might pray on Shearer's mind. He might get into the Bryan Robson syndrome - while he's playing he'll be marvellous, but he might not play for such a long time, because his style is so physical," said Lawrenson.

Dalglish knows that in football now there are two modes: triumph or catastrophe. Newcastle are probably just showing that it's possible to get stuck for a while between those extremes.