Marlon Harewood comes to Magpies’ rescue

Oct 1 2009 by Mark Douglas, The Journal

“You’re up against Championship battle-hardened teams who are used to playing the amount of games that we have to play.

“It’s something that we’ll keep stressing to the players. If you look at the games so far this season we’ve had to fight and work hard for everything so far.”

He was delighted with the impact of Harewood, who notched his first league goal for 18 months and made an immediate impact after replacing Nile Ranger.

“He’s a player with a lot of experience who is different from what we’ve got,” he said. “We know he can make an impact - the decision not to play him was only based on number of games played. He

will only get better with more games. Apart from his quality, he’s also a lad who’s been around and played at big clubs so he’s used to this type of arena and atmosphere that we’ll have.”

Hughton also leapt to the defence of Danny Guthrie, whose frustrating return from suspension was summed up by a poor penalty miss on 18 minutes.

The Newcastle boss also hauled off the ineffective Nicky Butt at half-time as his midfield misfired for the first time this season.

Kevin Nolan, the match-winner at Ipswich, was surprisingly quiet while Alan Smith showed plenty of industry but little invention.

“If we know the reasons why we’d be able to do something about it. The most pleasing thing is that we know we weren’t at our best but we had the better chances. If we’d scored the penalty we would have gone on,” he said.

“The one thing I’m sure is that Danny won’t be shying away from a penalty if another one comes up. It’s a situation where it either goes in or it doesn’t. I’m sure he can bounce back and I’m sure if the situation comes up he won’t shy away from stepping up.”