McClaren: I’m not worried, new signings are on the way

Steve McClaren: Slammed his side

Steve McClaren: Slammed his side

Steve McClaren has added Henri Saivet to his squad and is convinced he will get the other help he needs during the January transfer window to turn Newcastle’s season around.

The Magpies head into Tuesday night’s home clash with Manchester United sitting in 18th place in the Premier League table and having slipped to 1-0 defeats in each of their last four games in all competitions.

It has been glaringly obvious for some time that there are not enough goals in head coach McClaren’s team with £14.5million summer signing Aleksandar Mitrovic having found the going tough after being thrust into the limelight by the club’s failure to land an experienced and proven frontman during the summer and the injuries which have sidelined Papiss Cisse for much of the campaign and Emmanuel Riviere for all of it to date.

However, now that Bordeaux’s Senegal international midfielder Saivet has joined up, McClaren – who is also a member of the club’s board – is hopeful that those shortcomings will be and are being addressed.

He said: “It’s good because I know what is going on. Sometimes you don’t, so we are all involved in the process and we hope that will get the job done.

“If we were not doing everything to rectify it, I would be worried. If people weren’t backing us or trying, I would be worried.”

On Saivet, he added: “Henri is someone the club have been watching for a while, and he has developed into an excellent player at Bordeaux.

“This is someone with a very good mentality, who is a tough player and a winner. Those are key qualities you need in the Premier League and we are looking forward to seeing him pulling on the Newcastle United shirt.”

The statistics are damning: McClaren’s men have scored only 19 goals in 20 Premier League games, and six of those came on a single afternoon against Norwich back in October.

Mitrovic, 21, is currently the club’s only fit orthodox striker and he has just three goals to his name this season.

McClaren said: “It’s not rocket science, is it? To win games of football, you have to score goals and at the present moment, we have to score two to win games because we are conceding one every game.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, strikers want to score goals. They’re the worst people in the world when they’re not. But Mitro’s working damn hard out there, and we continue working and he will.

“I’d be more worried if we weren’t working because it’s not just his responsibility. It’s [Moussa] Sissoko’s responsibility, it’s [Georginio] Wijnaldum’s responsibility, [Ayoze] Perez’s responsibility, [Florian] Thauvin, Siem de Jong, Papiss.

“It’s everybody’s responsibility, not just the number nine.”