“I just think he’s played a lot at Newcastle where he’s not played in a position that has played to his strengths, which is getting forward and towards goal. Kevin’s a vocal lad around the place, he’s a good character and he’s worked particularly hard. He would have liked to have got his goal return, though. When I watched him

at Bolton he used to get 10-15 goals without questions.

“But it just won’t drop to him in the box, which is a shame because he’s a really good finisher.

“He’s a forward-looking midfield player and to be fair to Kevin that has been restricted a little bit at times since he came to Newcastle. We’ve tried to free him up a little bit, we’ll do that again for the Portsmouth game and hopefully that will get the rewards sooner or later.”

While Nolan is being backed to make a contribution, Steven Taylor will be relegated to the sidelines for the next two weeks after aggravating an ankle injury in the Tottenham defeat. Scans yesterday confirmed the bad news, which means that he will not be available again until the Middlesbrough game in a fortnight’s time.

Losing an experienced and capable defender is another piece of bad news for Dowie and Shearer, but the assistant boss is determined not to let negativity engulf the club in the final few weeks of the season.

Realistically, Newcastle now need to beat Portsmouth on Monday to stay in touch with the rest of the sides scrapping for safety, but Dowie reckons that would have been the task confronting United whatever the points return from North London at the weekend.

“The mood is very much upbeat around the place. I’m not a great believer in negativity – you’ve got to have a positive approach,” he said.

“My attitude now is that whatever had happened over the weekend, we’d still have had to win those home games. So now we need to get that win that is going to be vital to us and it will give us belief and we can go from there.”