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Opinion

Steve Howey says there’s only 3 things wrong with the Newcastle squad

9 years ago
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Former Newcastle and England centre-back (and one-time centre-forward) Steve Howey, says there are ‘only’ three things wrong with the current Newcastle squad.

Talking to Talksport, Howey said that the United squad wasn’t big enough, good enough or strong enough.

The former Newcastle player going on to say that the character was also lacking in the team/squad last season, with too many players going missing.

Results are another thing Steve Howey says can’t be ignored, if you want to see how good or bad Newcastle were in recet seasons, you simply have to look at the final league placings.

United finishing 16th, 10th and 15th over the course of the last three seasons, not even reaching 40 points in the one just ended.

“At the moment the squad isn’t big enough, it isn’t good enough and it is not strong enough – I have said that for a long time.

“It has been proved over the last couple of seasons and I’m not being harsh there, you can see it isn’t good enough because of where they’ve finished.”

Looking in the mirror:

“There were too many times when they went missing, you could maybe take two or three players out of that criticism but there are a lot of others who need to look in the mirror, wonder whether they did their best for Newcastle the fans – the answer is absolutely not.”

“Everybody wants to see attractive football and to win but sometimes you can’t have that, you sometimes need to win ugly, this (past) season there were too many times both the performance wasn’t there and the result wasn’t there.”

With no signings made as yet this summer, the reality is that Newcastle are already a number of first team squad players down before they start.

Compared to the last August, Newcastle have no longer got Mapou Yanga-Mbiwa, Davide Santon, Jonas Gutierrez, Ryan Taylor, Hatem Ben Arfa and on-loan Facundo Ferreyra, all senior players who were part of Newcastle’s first team squad. This is in addition to other younger players who have been allowed to go such as Remie Streete, Adam Campbell and Jak Alnwick, the last two named having appeared for the first team in their days at Newcastle.

Not saying that all, or indeed any, should have necessarily been kept, but it does further emphasise the massive rebuilding job that is needed this summer, both in terms of quality and quantity.

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