Chris: A chance to shine for Marlon Harewood

Oct 24 2009 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

Harewood still has more two months to establish himself at Newcastle before Hughton makes a decision on whether to extend his loan in the January transfer window.

It is much the same for fellow loanees Danny Simpson and Zurab Khizanishvili as Hughton declared he will definitely strengthen the squad at the start of the New Year now that he has been offered the manager’s job on a permanent basis.

He explained: “I don’t think we can allow ourselves to go past January and miss out on opportunities to make this squad as strong as we can for the second half of the season.

“Whether it will just be loan signings I don’t know. That’s something we’ll look at as we go along. At this moment we’re looking at loan signings but what I will find out is if there’s money to spend in that January window. That will be dictated by the circumstances over the next few weeks.”

The size of United’s squad has been exposed with the loss of both first-choice centre-halves in Fabricio Coloccini and Steven Taylor, which meant Danny Simpson was asked to play in the middle of the defence rather than at right-back.

Hughton, though, has denied that he intends to sign anyone to remedy this problem. Coloccini will return from a groin strain against Doncaster today while Taylor could be back in time for the trip to Sheffield United.

Hughton said: “Up until now we’ve coped well with the squad. We had a problem at centre-half and I think the options were always, once you have a problem, do you address that bringing by in a loan signing. You don’t want to bring in a loan unless you can guarantee them a good number of games.

“Sometimes you don’t want too many players in one position because you can only play one at a time. It’s always something you’re evaluating and it’s something you might get wrong because an injury gets thrown in when you’re least expecting it.

“Centre-back is an area we’ve been short in the last couple of games, but when I’m asked if we need to strengthen there the answer is probably no because we’ve got Coloccini back on Saturday and Steven Taylor looking at the next game after that against Sheffield United.”

Meanwhile, Newcastle have offered a trial to Dundalk’s Irish defender Nathan Murphy, 16, who will spend a few days training with the club next week.