Pardew: We're good enough to avoid scrap

Mar 6 2011 by Mark Douglas, Sunday Sun

ALAN PARDEW reckons Newcastle United have a good enough squad to prevent them from being drawn into a relegation scrap.

The Toon boss said he was “proud” of the efforts of his side despite seeing them fall to a fifth home defeat against spirited Everton.

And gave short shrift to talk of a survival battle, despite the bottom three moving to within six points of patched up United.

“I think the squad is deep enough. Touch wood we haven’t got any serious injuries,” he said.

“I’m not looking over my shoulder (at the teams below). I’ve looked at every game as a game that is winnable - and we’ll do the same when we go to Stoke. There’s no lack of belief in the camp or problem that I see, other than we’ve got too many injuries.

“I have to say that the second half was a fantastic effort from us. I’m proud of that. But that little bit of quality was possibly missing.

“And I’m actually buoyed by Shane Ferguson’s performance when he came on - he added a little bit to us.

“Perhaps when Enrique came off I could have brought him on. It’s only his youth and inexperience that prevented me, but he’s got talent, we saw that.

“I’m genuinely pleased by the way the squad players played. But at this level you need your best players on the pitch and unfortunately we didn’t have that.”

Pardew pin-pointed United frittering away their first-half lead as a key spell in the contest.

“I thought when we took the lead we looked comfortable at that stage,” he said. “The left side was causing them a lot of problems but we didn’t lock in when we were attacking and got caught twice. Then it was always going to be an uphill task – especially when Enrique got injured as well.

“It unbalanced us a little bit but you can’t play a game at this level with the quality of players we’ve had missing today.

“For all the effort and commitment we put in, sometimes that is too many players to lose. But I thought it was a fantastic effort from the team in terms of the character of the players who were introduced.”

The Toon boss also defended his team selection, which saw Danny Simpson deployed in an unfamiliar right midfield role while Steven Taylor was moved to right-back. He struggled against Mikel Arteta.

“We obviously didn’t know that Arteta would play that side. We just felt that would keep us solid and give us a good balance to the team,” he said. “Actually when I saw that selection I thought it would work well for us with Danny and Steven up against Arteta and Baines. But Arteta caused us problems - he was on his game, he was fantastic.”

Pardew was also unconvinced that Leon Best’s 78th minute header - chalked out for a push - was a foul.

“I thought he [Leon Best] was a little bit unlucky with the equaliser that got disallowed. He backed into him, [Phil] Jagielka, and unfortunately Leon put his hands up.”