Welcome to the edge, Bellamy tells Wayne

Spiky Newcastle striker vows to repay club's faith after latest mishap

Instead of the Nou Camp, the new start. Unlike his colleagues (well, all of them except Alan Shearer), Craig Bellamy cannot look forward from the wreckage of Newcastle United's 4-1 defeat against Internazionale last Wednesday night to a trip to Barcelona on Tuesday week.

Having been suckered into the retaliatory act which led to his fifth-minute departure against Inter, his horizons have been narrowed from the European Champions' League to the bread-and-butter domestics – starting with the visit of Everton to St James's Park this afternoon.

"Oh, I'll raise myself for it," Bellamy pledged. "There's no doubt about that. I'm quite looking forward to getting a game." Instead of getting a panning, he might have added, though nobody has been harder on Bellamy in the past four days than Bellamy himself.

The irony is that it was an old Evertonian who provoked the fiery young Welshman on Wednesday night. Whether Marco Materazzi has done his old club a short-term favour remains to be seen. Bellamy is sure to be fired up to make amends this afternoon, though for once David Moyes has the luxury of going into a match without the spotlight being trained upon his 17-year-old wunderkind. The striking duo who struck out for Newcastle in Europe on Wednesday will be the focus of attention today. Bellamy, the Professional Footballers' Association's Young Player of the Year, is, however, looking forward to getting another glimpse of Wayne Rooney, the teenager he rates as the best young player of all-time.

"He's an unbelievable player," Bellamy said. "I watched him play in the Worthington Cup here and he was beyond special. To think that he has just turned 17 is unbelievable. He's too good a player. He's clever. He's the best young player I've ever seen."

Bellamy was not a bad player himself in his younger days. He made his debut for Norwich as a 17-year-old, as a substitute in a 2-0 defeat away to Crystal Palace in May 1997. He had the benefit of learning his trade away from the glare of national publicity, though – in the relative shadows of the First Division. Not that all the rough edges were knocked off a player Bobby Robson describes as "truculent" – a player who, at 17, was locked in the toilet of the Norwich team bus because he insisted on telling the seasoned professionals where they had been going wrong.

Wednesday night confirmed that Bellamy still has his spiky side – a side he can see in the robust approach that Rooney brings to his game. "I think that's what makes him so special," Bellamy said. "He's got that edge. You don't see 17-year-olds like him. He's so mature. He's got that little bit extra about him. He wants to be a player. You can't take that away from him.

"He's going to get himself the odd booking but you can see that he doesn't need to curb much, because he's going to be special. I watched Alan Smith when I was at Coventry a couple of years ago and he had it all – the competitive edge. I looked at him and said to myself, 'I need to be that sort of player. I need to be competitive'. And Wayne Rooney has got that in his formula." He has indeed, as his collection of four yellow cards (three in the Premiership, one in the Worthington Cup) confirms. In the pragmatic Moyes, Rooney has the ideal manager to smooth his rough edges. Robson has done his best with Bellamy, though his exasperation was clear on Wednesday night, having been the same way just 10 weeks previously.

True, Newcastle wouldn't have made it to the second phase of the Champions' League had it not been for the brilliance of Bellamy in their sixth and final group game, against Feyenoord in Rotterdam. They might not have had to make it the hard way, though, had their quicksilver striker not been banned for three matches for his tête-à-tête with Tiberiu Ghioane in their opening game in Kiev. In the second phase the Magpies will have to make their way without Bellamy for at least three matches and Shearer, who has been retrospectively penalised for elbowing the Inter captain, Fabio Cannavaro, for two games.

"I let all my team-mates down," Bellamy said. "It was unfair for them to be playing against 11 top-class players with 10 men. I let my manager down, and the fans. They paid good money to watch a good game. And, most of all, I let myself down a massive, massive amount, because I worked so hard to get over my knee injury and I already missed a few games due to my stupidity in Kiev. It's like I haven't learned.

"I can't blame other players for winding me up. You get that week in, week out. I wind up enough players myself to know about it. That's part of the game. But to retaliate in the way I did was disgraceful, really. I shouldn't have got involved in that little battle.

"It will hit me enormously when we go to Barcelona, because who doesn't want to play in the Nou Camp? I'm trying not to think about it at the moment because it's going to be a really depressing moment for me." It promises to be a really depressing moment for Bobby Robson too. Logic would suggest that no Bellamy plus no Shearer can only add up to one thing for Newcastle in the Nou Camp. No chance of Champions' League redemption.