Steve Bruce believes Newcastle United are equipped to stay up this season because they have 'shown enough resilience' to 'make a fist of it'.
Following a 5-0 defeat at Leicester City last week, the 19th-placed Magpies are the bookies' favourites to go down after winning just one of their opening seven league games of the season.
While Newcastle have three more points than they did at this stage last season, following a similarly difficult run of fixtures, that sole win of the campaign, against Spurs, feels a long time ago.
But Bruce has taken heart from what he has seen from his side at times - even if it has only resulted in five points.
"Are they equipped to stay up? Yeah, certainly, we're equipped to stay up that's for sure," he told reporters ahead of Sunday's game against Manchester United.
"Look, we had a horrible, horrible day. It was one of them awful ones that stays with you for a long, long time. I think in 20 odd years, I've been beaten five twice so I'll do everything I possibly can to reassure them that we have got enough in the squad.
"We haven't been scintillating this year but we have shown enough resilience in places like Spurs, against Leicester and Arsenal at home where we can make a fist of it.
"We're going to have to play a lot better than we did last week but I'm quietly confident with the injuries trying to help us, we'll be OK."
Jetro Willems, Jonjo Shelvey and Dwight Gayle have all returned to to training this week while Andy Carroll's ankle has not had an adverse reaction to the 35 minutes of football he has had since returning to action.
Allan Saint-Maximin, who was an unused substitute at Leicester, is fit to start after recovering from a hamstring injury.
"He gives us something that we've not got. He's got that bit of pace, bit of power and we've seen that so he'll definitely give us something which will add to us going forward," Bruce added.
Last week, when we got to 3-0, I decided then to give Yedlin 20/25 minutes. It's still been a problem so it gave hm an extra week's training which he's had which dispels anything so he's 100% ready.
