The Sports Lowdown For All Your News and OpinionsEight games into the season and Newcastle find themselves bottom of the league, having just been thrashed by Manchester City.
After the struggles of last season where they just avoided relegation on the final day of the season, the fans would have been hoping this season would be better. Steve McClaren is the right man to lead the club forward but he needs to change a lot of things if he is to transform the clubs fortunes.
Mike Ashley backed McClaren in the transfer market in the summer and 5 players were brought in, but out of those 5 players none of them have any Premier League experience. For a few seasons now the club has mainly bought foreign players and this is now catching up with the club.
The club has gone into the foreign market as the players are better value for money; Yohan Cabaye was bought for £4.3m and was later sold to PSG for £19m. Cabaye was a superb buy and turned out to be a great player for Newcastle, but too many of their other signings haven’t worked out anywhere near as well. Cheick Tiote and Papiss Cisse are great players on their day, but their day isn’t often enough.
What Steve needs is time, he needs at least 2/3 transfer windows to get rid of the deadwood, and he needs to be given money to bring in players. Newcastle really need to start looking at players with Premier League experience, players who know what the league is all about, players who are up for the fight.
Newcastle are a big club and they should have no trouble attracting good players to the club. Cisse and Tiote are 2 players that should be shown the door.
United have some really exciting players in their squad like Georgino Wijnaldum and Aleksander Mitrovic and once they’ve settled in they should become really good players; with a few wise additions Newcastle could really move up a level and start challenging in the top half of the table. In the match against City none of the starting 11 were English and this is something that needs to change.
I’m going to look at 3 players that McClaren should target.
1.Charlie Austin – He should be available at the right price in January and he should be a prime target, he would add goals to the team and also brings with him much needed fighting spirit.
2. Nathan Redmond – The young Norwich star is a really exciting prospect and would bring pace and trickery to the team.
3. Michael Carrick – The Manchester United midfielder would be a superb addition if they could get him in the summer, he would bring a wealth of experience with him and much needed leadership skills. He may seem like an unrealistic target but he is a Newcastle lad so he could possibly be tempted.
