This was a humiliation that showed, if anyone still doubted it, that Tottenham Hotspur are lacking leadership and direction on the pitch and off of it, from within the squad, to the sidelines and up to those at the very top.
The clouds opened and the goals rained down. There was no anger on the pitch among the Tottenham players, no shouting matches, just a meek acceptance that this is what they have become. A disjointed mess with nothing guiding them, nothing bonding them and nothing inspiring them.
After the game Ryan Mason and Harry Kane, with some of the Spurs squad eventually following their path like Oliver Skipp and Eric Dier, went over to applaud the supporters who had made the long, expensive and ultimately pointless trip up the country only to be served up one of the worst performances seen in the Premier League's recent history.
READ MORE: Tottenham player ratings vs Newcastle: Lloris, Romero, Dier among those dreadful in collapse
While Mason and Kane did that, their chairman Daniel Levy had walked down from the director's box and into the tunnel.
Those standing down there would have been wondering if the 61-year-old would do a Todd Boehly and storm into the dressing room and give them a piece of his mind as the Chelsea co-owner had done the previous week with the players he employs.
The answer is no. Levy headed straight through the tunnel, into the main reception at St James' Park and out the exit on his way to catch his flight home.
The Tottenham fans, the ones who had not already left the stadium during the embarrassing the first half, enjoyed no such luxury in their escape as all trains back to London were heavily delayed due to a points failure. The irony of that term would not have been lost on them.
Levy would have once again heard the chants demanding his exit, audible at various points during the game despite the din of the noisy Newcastle fans. Contrast that with the home chairman Yasir Al-Rumayyan, who before the game could be seen shaking hands and gladly accepting requests for selfies with the Geordie supporters.
Levy and his advisors will no doubt tell each other that everyone is overreacting. They'll point to the table and say Spurs are fifth, not in a relegation scrap and yet another change in manager will give the fans something else to focus on.
Yet the emergency texts sent out to everyone at 3pm might as well have been for the crisis at Tottenham.
To write off this period in the club's history as a blip would be ignoring the wider issues and rot that has set in at a club that needs major surgery not a band aid. It has no men's or women's manager, no director of football and a star player who looks utterly wasted as he enters the final 12 months of his contract.
This time, for the first time in weeks, there were no chants for Mauricio Pochettino's return, with the growing expectation that the Argentine will instead take charge of their rivals Chelsea.
Levy never contacted Pochettino about a return to Spurs this time even though football.london understands the 51-year-old would have been at least open to a conversation about coming back to the club he was unceremoniously sacked from in 2019.
There will be anger with the Tottenham chairman for snubbing the last manager to make the fans truly happy, but the absence of chants also suggested a disappointment that out of all the clubs Pochettino could have chosen instead, did it have to be the team he once declared were actually Spurs' biggest rivals?
For his part, the current incumbent in the dugout - Cristian Stellini - finally dispensed with any lingering notion that he might be able to force his way in amongst the candidates for the permanent job.
The Italian is popular among the players but this game delivered a timely reminder that that means precious little to your managerial success, especially at Tottenham.
Stellini had tried to change things up in what felt like a desperate last-gasp attempt to appease the fans and extricate himself from the wide held belief that he is simply trying to do what Antonio Conte would have wanted him to ahead of their inevitable reunion.
Spurs fans had been calling for a back four but this was not the time. The Italian did not have the personnel to do it, lacking any natural full-backs to make such a system workable.
Yet he went ahead with it, using a winger turned wing-back in Ivan Perisic as a left-back and Pedro Porro in a role that looked alien to him on the right.
Between them were Eric Dier and Cristian Romero. Dier is 29 yet brings little in the way of experience, leadership or organisation to the backline, constantly running out of position in a misguided attempt at covering others. His predictable passes to attackers coming deep often puts them in trouble, as it did to Son Heung-min for Newcastle's third goal and has done to both the South Korean and Kane repeatedly this season.
Romero will stare at his World Cup winner's medal and be one of the few Spurs players to remember this season fondly. Yet if he wants to improve and realise his potential he will also need to analyse and learn from his club campaign which has been far below the standards of his debut term in north London, not least his final season at Atalanta when he was named Serie A Defender of the Year.
Romero at club level this season has often appeared to believe his own hype rather than confirm it, lunging into tackles for the cameras and embarking on eye-catching runs rather than maintaining his discipline.
Yet he also switches off at times. His half-hearted effort to raise a toe as Joelinton breezed past him in the opening minute left acres of space for the Brazilian to run into and get a shot away. Hugo Lloris parried it to his left, where Perisic had no idea Jacob Murphy was behind him.
For the second goal just four minutes later, Romero did similar, allowing a ball to drop behind him, but failing to realise that Joelinton was there, running between both centre-backs to score.
Then came Murphy's rocket from distance after Dier's trouble-making pass, with nobody closing him down. Both of Alexander Isak's two quickfire goals before 21 minutes came from excellent Newcastle moves, but each shot appeared to go through Lloris.
There is a certain irony that Davinson Sanchez, who was brought on after 23 minutes for Pape Matar Sarr, ended up being Spurs' best defender on the day after last week's boos, although admittedly the competition was not much.
The Tottenham fans began singing the olés every time their team completed a pass after the fifth goal went in, some gallows humour to keep themselves amused. They had to laugh otherwise they would cry.
Lloris did not emerge for the second half. Stellini told football.london that the Frenchman had a muscle injury which forced a change with Fraser Forster coming on. The theories emerged on social media that the Spurs captain must have been involved in a ruckus in the dressing room.
There were certainly angry words spoken among the players during the break, the normally quiet young Skipp understood to be one of those visibily livid with the team's display, but if anything Lloris had done had crossed the line then it would seem unlikely Tottenham would have put the Frenchman up for the many post-match interviews he did with all of the broadcasters after the game.
When talking to Sky Sports, the World Cup winner suggested he could be out for a while with his latest problem.
"It doesn't good. It's a muscle around the hip. I felt something on a long kick and it doesn't sound good but we'll see tomorrow and after two days with a scan," he said.
On Tottenham's performance Lloris said the responsibility lay with the players.
"It's very embarrassing and the first thing is that probably we should apologise to the fans that travelled, all the fans that watched the game. Obviously we didn't show a great face today. I think we could not match the performance of the Newcastle players," he said.
"We were late in all the aspects of the game and we completely missed the first part of the game. Obviously the second half is another story but it's really painful today."
He added: "It's not even about tactics. We could not fight. We were late in all of the aspects and Newcastle they had a great performance. They were very aggressive. Offensively every time they got the ball they were looking forward. It's difficult right now to analyse and assess the performance. It was lacking in pride.
"To concede five goals in 20 minutes, you can get punched once or twice and you can concede but on the pitch was something strange. We could not even react, we could not even bounce back into the game.
"Newcastle deserve a lot of credit, they started the game at 100mph and they were very dynamic. They knew exactly what to do with the ball and without the ball. Then we were a bit late everywhere on the field."
Lloris did not want to lay the blame at the door of Stellini's switch to a 4-3-3 formation, something the team had trained in all week.
"We can try to find excuses [in the formation] and try to analyse, but the first thing I think we missed the fight," he explained. "In football if you go on the pitch without the desire to show aggression to win duels and the battles it makes things very hard. You have to be very good with the ball technically and tactically. It was a big mess on the field."
He was not accepting that the club's mess off the pitch had brought issues on it.
"We cannot hide ourselves behind the club's problems. We're players, we're professional. Every time we go on the pitch we try to deliver the best but today there was too much lacking in all the aspects," said the skipper.
"It's just the difference in level today between Newcastle and Tottenham. Now there are two other very difficult games in the week and we have to bounce back as a team."
Harry Kane managed a consolation goal, one that takes him to 207 Premier League goals, just one behind second-placed Wayne Rooney in the all-time rankings. The current England captain deserves so much better than this mess he finds himself in yet again.
His acting head coach Stellini will do well to survive this week with the games ahead let alone this horror show of a performance.
His appointment was one of convenience for Levy and some might suggest saved some money in Conte's staff seeing out their contracts rather than being paid off as others came in to replace them.
The Italian looked helpless on the sidelines in the driving rain. Other than calling Oliver Skipp over after the third goal and shouting angrily at the young midfielder, he looked lost.
Stellini is a likeable character behind the scenes but that's not enough to manage a Premier League football club with a managerial CV that shows just a handful of months in charge of lower league Italian side Alessandria after coaching Genoa's U21s.
He has not improved Tottenham since Conte's exit in any shape or form and Sunday's debacle brought 21 minutes of football that an U8s coach would have been ashamed of being in charge of, let alone a Premier League one.
With six league games left, it's now a similar situation to the one that saw Ryan Mason and Chris Powell take over in 2021 - albeit without a league cup final - and you can't help but wonder whether history repeats itself. For 31-year-old Mason, with Ben Davies and Emerson Royal returning and the chance to play with a proper back four, the chance presents itself to impress. It can't get worse than this surely?
"There's no words to explain a performance like this. The first 25 minutes were the worst I have ever seen," said Stellini afterwards. "I hope that the system we changed to give us energy was the wrong decision. If it was that, it's my responsibility. We played with four at the back and if this is the mistake, it's my mistake.
"Today, what I can say, is we have to apologise to everyone, and I hope that today is my responsibility because changing system was my decision. Like I said, I hope it was this that was the problem."
When pushed on those potential other issues, he added: "The other problems are many problems, because I repeat, this season is not a normal season and maybe many things happen.
"So there is not only one thing to care [of], if you want to analyse all the season, to arrive here in a match like this, that you have to play an important match, to reach your target that is top four, and you start like this? Is a surprise for everyone. I hope that the system was the problem."
football.london asked Stellini if he was concerned that his position was in danger after this embarrassing display.
"This is a question… I have no answer for this because it is not a question for me," he said.
Ultimately the decision will once again fall on Levy, the man at the top who seems to have no real plan in place.
In a video released this week, the Spurs chairman spent 42 minutes with students at his old Cambridge stamping ground, during a Q&A session last month, explaining his time at the club in a way he has never done for its fans.
The session was an exercise for Levy in pointing the finger of blame at everyone for anything that has gone wrong at the club, including results, transfers and managerial hiring and firing, while talking up any achievement he could off the pitch from his two decades years at the helm.
Levy appears to have a plan off that turf for the club's brand but with what happens on the grass there's precious little to suggest any joined-up thinking.
He will soon appoint the 13th permanent manager to have served during his 22 year tenure with little to no consistency in the types hired since dispensing with George Graham way back in his first year at the top.
The urge to hire yet another glamourous manager that does not fit his club will be there once again despite the flashing warning signs as obvious as those noisy emergency alerts.
Both Conte and Jose Mourinho were appointments spearheaded by Levy, despite going to the effort of putting together a structure that was meant to place more weight in the knowledge of football people.
Logical business people surround themselves with experts in the fields they want their company to succeed in. The best ones then listen to them.
Another structural change will happen with the arrival of Scott Munn in a newly-created chief football officer role. The Australian will be the closest thing Tottenham have ever had to a Levy number two for a long time.
Munn is not a director of football type and football.london understands the club expect to appoint a replacement for Fabio Paratici, another hire by Levy that looked more and more farcical with each passing month and a shining advert for performing due diligence before making appointments.
That in turn leads to another quandary. Do you appoint a head coach before that new director of football? In most clubs the director of football selects the head coach but Tottenham are not most clubs.
Paratici's managerial hire was Nuno Espirito Santo - a disaster - so Levy stepped in (again) and made the call to Conte.
So does the chairman push through his own managerial appointment again? Does he wait until a new director of football is in place? Can he afford to wait? As in the other scenario, shouldn't Munn select the director of football he wants to work with? While the Australian is not officially meant to start work until July 1, he is likely to be consulted over any moves.
The hope would be that there is some joined-up thinking when it comes to the appointments of head coach and director of football but hope and joined-up thinking have been in short supply for a while at Tottenham Hotspur.
There are some suggestions from Germany that Julian Nagelsmann, having seemingly not been that enamoured with the prospect of taking over from Conte at first, may have had a change of heart since dropping out of the running for the Chelsea job.
The view over whether he dropped out or was not the main candidate differs depending on which side of the decision you speak to as is the norm in football.
With the prospect growing of Carlo Ancelotti remaining at Real Madrid for the final season of his contract there, another avenue of top level employment would seem to be closing for the young German manager.
While Spurs are keen to avoid appointing a manager who might see them as a fall back option, a Nagelsmann with a point to prove might override that line of thinking. It's not like the club are ever truly wed to their best intentions anyway. Just see Levy's promise of appointing a new manager who would play attractive entertaining football back in May 2021 for that.
Whatever happens, Tottenham need to select a manager who wants to be there for the long haul and build something.
That's because never have Spurs needed a project manager more than a glamour appointment as much as they do now because of the scale of the project that must be undertaken and the time it might take.
There are a number of good candidates for such a task and if there is truth to Nagelsmann's current line of thinking - that's if Sunday did not sending him running for the German hills - then he would be a rare choice that ticks both boxes. He also flits between a back four and back three as a coach who constantly alters his tactics to suit the situation, often mid-game.
There needs to be patience for the next manager from not only the club but also from a fanbase that has understandably lost such a commodity.
Patience is required though for whoever comes in may have to take a step backwards to then move forwards and they will have to oversee a major overhaul of the playing squad.
The biggest problem with Levy's lurching from one type of manager to the next is the chaos it leaves in its wake with the squad.
This current one is one built for a coach who plays without creative central midfielders and instead uses wing-backs. Even Pedro Porro, signed just over two months ago in a deal that becomes a permanent £40m move at the end of the season, is a more natural wing-back.
To sign him for such money at the end of January when Conte's stay at Tottenham beyond the end of the season looked unlikely exemplifies the short-termism of the club's thinking in the past four years.
They will now have to adapt a £40m player to life in a back four and try to make it work rather than having a £40m right-back. The 23-year-old Spaniard may well quickly learn under the right manager but he will need time. He holds the unwanted tag of having been dribbled past more times - 15 - than any other Premier League player in 2023 so far.
A new captain is likely to be required with Spurs planning to sign a long-term replacement for Lloris this summer, while other long-standing squad members coming into the final years of their deals could find themselves heading out the door.
It is going to be yet another summer of change at Tottenham Hotspur. This time it needs to be change for the better and as part of a long-term strategy. Levy must tell the fans directly exactly what that plan is and stick to it.
The Spurs chairman maintained during his Cambridge Q&A that he felt his lack of communication over the years is "dignified". Nobody outside his protective inner circle sees it that way and the crowd on Thursday night are likely to make that very clear in ever-increasing numbers as they communicate their own feelings very clearly.
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