Steve McClaren said he would happily sign up for Newcastle United reaching 40 points by mid-April, only three months after he targeted a top-eight finish. This dramatic downgrading of ambition reflects the manager’s new-found relegation fears and, in an attempt to avoid the drop, he will try to persuade the hierarchy to start signing players aged over 25.
McClaren set his sights on finishing in the top eight when he took over in June and restated that aim after signing Georginio Wijnaldum four weeks later. But having begun without a victory from the first eight Premier League games, he has swiftly adjusted his sights.
Although he is quietly encouraged by two impressive 45-minute periods in a home draw with Chelsea and at Manchester City – where his side collapsed in the second half, ultimately losing 6-1 – the 54-year-old has jettisoned his pre-season objective. Instead Newcastle’s stark new reality dictates that he acknowledges a relegation struggle looms.
“If somebody said: ‘You’ll have 40 points by mid-April’, I’d take it,” said McClaren as he prepared for Sunday’s vital home against Norwich. “I think people would think I’d gone absolutely crazy if I turned that down. The most important thing for us is to get to 40 points. Especially with the new television deal, that has to be the absolute priority. It’s the same for 10 or 11 other clubs. It’s always the same; at Middlesbrough we used to have massive parties when we got to 40 points.”
One of the reasons Newcastle are bottom of the league is a lack of leadership within a team who have been on a downward spiral for almost a year. McClaren’s task is to reverse that trajectory but the former England coach has been hampered by the demand of Mike Ashley, Newcastle’s owner, that only players with potentially high resale values are signed.
McClaren feels it is no coincidence that Aston Villa, who have a similar strategy in place, are also struggling at the wrong end of the Premier League and will endeavour to ensure some much-needed experience is recruited in January.
“I’m here to help this football club go forward and my opinions on that have been voiced from day one,” said McClaren, who will be without his injured goalkeeper Tim Krul for the remainder of the campaign. “Everybody knows. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes, a lot of discussions and forward planning. I’m sitting there and saying: ‘You know what – we need to do this, and we need to do that.’ The next window is very important for this club.”
Until McClaren can sign some experienced professionals to help the club’s undeniably gifted batch of youngsters fulfil their potential, the manager must concentrate on erasing his squad’s pronounced mental fragility.
“We’re getting little setbacks that are causing us to disintegrate,” he said. “They’re shattering the confidence and belief. We need to address that, but I really believe there’s a win around the corner. We don’t quite know where, but once it happens and we get the monkey off our backs and the shackles are released, this team will really move forward.”
