'Robson's a better manager now than when he was with England'

Newcastle Utd v Tottenham: Hoddle pays tribute to game's grey eminence and puts his longevity down to passion

At just after the hour on Boxing Day afternoon, even that great zealot Sir Bobby Robson might have questioned whether there weren't more inviting ways of spending the festive season than witnessing highly paid young men, most nearly half a century his junior, contrive to concede four goals to the bottom club but one. Meanwhile, at around the same stage in his club's fixture, a couple of hundred miles south, Glenn Hoddle might just have questioned the futility of the previous week's defensive training routines when his rearguard could permit their visitors the freedom to score twice.

The expressions betray everything: the lines on Robson's crumpled visage appearing to multiply by the minute; Hoddle rather more stoic, that familiar wedge of a chin jutting out defiantly, but his eyes unable to conceal the tension within.

True, both their respective clubs, Newcastle United and Tottenham Hotspur, staged partial recovery missions, the former eventually defeated 4-3 by Bolton Wanderers at the Reebok, the latter rallying to secure a 2-2 draw with Charlton Athletic at White Hart Lane. Yet such days illustrate what purgatory the two former England managers, whose teams meet today at St James' Park, put themselves through in the cause of reclaiming their clubs' former glory.

In three days' time Bobby Robson begins his 54th year in professional football since embarking on a playing career for Fulham, West Bromwich Albion and England. He has been a manager and coach for 35 of them and, though he will be 70 in February, he claims not to have contemplated retirement. The fact is, of course, that Robson is unique, at this level in English football, in continuing to possess both the cerebral powers and undisturbed enthusiasm.

If you ask Hoddle whether he will still be variously gesticulating, raging and occasionally allowing himself to celebrate the spoils of victory as a manager when a septuagenarian, he responds: "I don't know about that. I think if Bobby had started with the stress that we have today when he was 35 at Fulham he'd have probably had enough by now. If his whole managerial career had been like what it has been over the last seven or eight years for most of us then maybe it would have been different for him. The span of a manager's career is probably going to be less now because of all the pressures that we have.

"As Bobby's got more experienced – I don't like to use that word 'older', you can't judge people by the number of grey hairs they've got – he's had his eyes opened by going abroad and discovering how clubs are managed there. He's become a better coach than he was, maybe, when he was with England. He's grown in every way, but the core for him is a love for the game. If you haven't got that you can't continue."

At the summit of their select mini-league, the venerable knight and his ambitious young challenger are intriguingly locked in combat. With both their clubs on 32 points, and placed sixth and eighth in the Premiership respectively, Robson and Hoddle head the Ex-England Manager and Head Coaches Division, a contingent which also contains Graham Taylor, Kevin Keegan and Terry Venables, and not forgetting Howard Wilkinson, who minded the England shop after Keegan's departure.

Europe beckons for both Newcastle and Spurs and a Uefa Cup place, at worst, is attainable if current progress is maintained. Still, both managers are acutely aware that neither has won a trophy since returning to their respective clubs. Newcastle have been deficient in that respect since claiming the FA Cup in 1955. Spurs' last silverware was rather more recent, of course, a Worthington Cup in 1999, but that was under George Graham.

Expectation at both clubs is unrelenting, the more so with a Geordie in charge of Newcastle and a former much-revered player managing Tottenham, but the fact that both have undergone the "England experience" undoubtedly helps them to deal with demands from supporters which at times incline towards the unrealistic. Certainly Hoddle would rather shoulder the burden he has today than the one he undertook at the inception of his managerial career, at Swindon Town.

"In many ways it's more exciting because you've got a bigger stage. The pressures are more, but if you don't want that then don't accept the job," he says. "I believe after the pressure of doing the England job, you can take on anything."

He adds: "The really enjoyable, exciting part is picking your team and working on things and seeing players produce good performances, and improve, and, if you do get a bad result, the challenge of finding out: 'Why did it go wrong and can we put it right?' There's masses of inner challenges that nobody thinks about. The worst part is the 90 minutes of the game. When they go over that white line, you're sitting there, helpless, wondering whether they're going to implement what you've asked them to do. Are they going to play well on the day? And what about so-and-so who's not performing? Has he got a problem you don't know about? They're out of your hands to a degree. Obviously you can make changes and adjustments, but ultimately it's not you that can put the ball in the back of the net. You can't save a shot. They're your troops out there doing it for you."

Whatever the state of his team, it's that essential passion for the game which sustains him. "Bobby Robson's got that. I've got it. Every manager working today will tell you they've got it," Hoddle says. "When they're out of it, they want to be in it." He pauses and smiles wryly. "Of course, there are days, well, maybe, the odd hour when you're in it and think: 'Shit, I want to be out of it'." Like when his team were 2-0 adrift on Boxing Day, for example, or when Robson was contemplating a heavy defeat, presumably.

Come today at one of the great citadels of football, you can be assured that neither Hoddle nor the game's newest knight could imagine being anywhere else.