Magpies' squad is too thin – Kevin Nolan

Oct 19 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

MIKE Ashley has been warned he will have to spend to strengthen the squad in January if he goes through with his threat to take the club off the market for a second time in less than a year.

Ashley claimed over the weekend that he has lowered his asking price for the club to £80m – but warned he will give up on trying to sell it if Tyneside businessman Barry Moat does not prove he can give him all of that money up front by this time next week.

That is a clear signal the Ashley regime are willing to remain at St James’s Park, despite their unpopularity and the fresh wave of indignation on Tyneside which followed revelations from Kevin Keegan’s FA hearing that members of his board had lied in interviews as a “public relations exercise”.

However, should Ashley – as is now widely expected – decide to keep hold of the club, he has been urged to finally provide the necessary financial backing caretaker manager Chris Hughton needs to create a squad which can cope with the stress and strains of a hectic Championship schedule, following the 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest.

Few Newcastle players – with the exception of the excellent Alan Smith and Jose Enrique – came out of the defeat with

any credit, and midfielder Kevin Nolan turned his anger and frustration towards the boardroom.

He said: “We need to strengthen. We’ve been saying this for a long, long time and it seems to have fallen on deaf ears. We need to strengthen the squad if we are going to give ourselves the best chance of going up.

“Chris Hughton needs the right backing, that’s been proved against Forest. We’ve lost Steven Taylor and Fabricio Coloccini and we’re having to play a right-back (Danny Simpson) at centre-half.

“It’s a paper-thin squad and a couple of injuries kill us. It can’t be allowed to happen and it is frustrating to have to keep saying it.

“We want to get back to where we belong and I hope we are backed to do that. We weren’t good enough against Forest, but we are not getting the help we deserve.

“A lot has been made of the togetherness we have. We’ve got a great set of lads and potentially one of the best, albeit small, squads in the division. We have to put this right because the performance wasn’t good enough.