Newcastle United have confirmed that Rob Elliot will play in goal for the struggling Premier League club against Norwich at the weekend.
Advertisement
“From my understanding, McClaren still retains the support of the St James’ Park hierarchy”. The way he played, he was worth 18 to 20 points a season for us.
It helps that Newcastle appear ready to scrap their insistence on recruiting only players aged 25 and under, a policy which has led to a debilitating lack of experience and leadership in the dressing room. “He is very experienced at going into clubs like Sunderland”. If you’re together and they know you’re doing the job, doing the right things and the players are responding – be it Newcastle or whatever – they’ll say, “You know what – we’re on the right lines”. “If we get that pressure in, we handle it and we perform, we will win football matches”. It was a massive blow to my confidence and belief but I felt I had a lot to prove.
“There have been a couple of games this season where I felt we have deserved to win, but we haven’t – and those four or five extra points would put you in a very different scenario”.
“Will we be making conclusions about people?”
“The most important thing at the present moment – and this is probably true for 10 or 11 of the clubs in the league – is to get to 40 points”. Yeah, that’ll start to hot up, the nearer that (January) comes, but that’s behind everything.
The last time the Magpies suffered relegation to the Championship, too many people mentioned the club’s status, how they were too big to go down, and that attitude meant they lacked a fighting spirit.
This is especially true for Newcastle United at the moment, who recently lost goalkeeper Tim Krul for the rest of the season to injury.
Aleksandar Mitrovic is set to continue as a lone centre-forward, with McClaren set to choose between Ayoze Perez, Georginio Wijnaldum and Siem de Jong for the “number ten” berth.
Advertisement
“When I’ve seen the last two games, I’ve seen two 45 minutes of what I want to see from this team”, said McClaren. Newcastle is a tough place to go, there’ll be a real atmosphere and they will be targeting that first win, but we want to keep our record going away.
