At the risk of offending the traditionalists, i've never understood the importance of this moniker of being the oldest-whatever-club.
I've got some extremely old gardening shoes, that belonged to my great-grandfather, (maybe the oldest in the UK) but surprisingly they have no value whatsoever.
If being the oldest-whatever-club is the major selling point for NCFC, i'm not surprised that we find ourselves, up to our necks in the brown stuff...