Manchester United is more competitive than ever with the recent additions to the team making it obviously a lot harder for Lingard to break into the side.
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Southampton recovered impressively from a wholesale exodus of first-team players at the start of last season.
McClaren became England manager because of the excellent work he did at Middlesbrough, where he won the League Cup and reached the final of the Uefa Cup and Newcastle owner Mike Ashley is hoping for something similar on Tyneside.
Most recently he narrowly failed to lead Derby to promotion, last season.
“You are coming back into a Premier League pretty much the same as it was before – full of foreign managers and foreign players – and I think my experience working overseas as helped me with those relationships as well”.
As effusive about Wijnaldum as he had been about Mitrovic, McClaren said: “I knew him [Wijnaldum] very well from my time [managing] in Holland”. Southampton have quality throughout the side and they play attractive football, with the best defense in the league last year if Southampton can find more consistancy up front this could be a team challenging for the Champions League places at the end of the year.
“Stood on the sidelines, 90,000 people, a nation watching on TV, a nation on your shoulders, a nation of expectation. Wherever I have been since then (England), I have said, “That’s it, I just want to do the job here and not have ambitions for anywhere else” – and so I am here”. That was a whole nation on your shoulders, now we’re talking about a region. But this region is one of the biggest. The new signings, plus McClaren, were given a reminder of the potential scale of Newcastle United, and the attendance against Southampton is expected to be a healthy 50,000. It is huge, and a massive pressure. I know I came with a bit of a reputation but he’s been great.
Emmanuel was so disappointing last season, that I genuinely forgot to include him until I went and looked at Newcastle’s squad to see if I had missed anyone. “England was quite big”.
The players are key to it all and I’m happy with what I see in the dressing room, both in terms of technical ability and attitude.
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Smith originally left the Magpies in 2004 after an 11-year period when he worked under Ruud Gullit and Sir Bobby Robson and he will now link up with the recently-appointed Steve McClaren at St. James’ Park.
