Is Steve McClaren racing towards Newcastle exit?

Saturday saw another miserable defeat for Newcastle at home to Bournemouth and one that could very well spell the end of Steve McClaren’s uninspiring tenure at St James Park. A 3-1 defeat was the trigger for vociferious boos at full time and that certainly won’t have gone unnoticed by owner Mike Ashley.

The loss to a fellow club in that pocket of half a dozen teams battling to fight the drop in the shape of Bournemouth has assisted their own hopes of staying up this season while making the job even harder for Newcastle but is it a job that Steve McClaren will get to see out?

Mike Ashley sanctioned a sizeable amount of transfer expenditure in January with the idea that those players would give Newcastle that extra impetus in the second half of the season and drag them up the table only that plan hasn’t quite come to fruition, truth be told with the club sitting second bottom of the Premier League they’ve come nowhere close.

It wasn’t the most crazy strategy though, when you think about all the extra TV Money that will come into play this Summer then a small outlay by comparison could then reap being rewards at the start of the next season, I guess though it’s only a smart gamble if they manage to stay up.

If they don’t then players like Jonjo Shelvey and Andros Townsend will be facing the prospect of playing in The Championship. Not where you want to be when you are regularly in and around the fringes of the England squad.

Although players of that ilk who were signed in January weren’t signed with any relegation clauses connected to their wages, so you would think that Mike Ashley would want to try and regain some of that January outlay and make the stints of Shelvey and Townsend a short one.

Someone else who could be having a short stint on Tyneside is Steve McClaren. The former England Manager’s reputation as a coach has taken another battering in the North East this season and you have to wonder whether Mike Ashley is going to push the panic button now that we are in the final quarter of the season.

If he sticks then he has a Manager who try as he might to turn the sinking ship around with only 9 games to go has definitely lost the fans, he’s seemingly lost the dressing room and could lose the club their Premier League status.

The Magpies have lost three in a row now and confidence seems to be low at St James Park, with Aston Villa easily the worst team in the League this season then there 2 relegation spots still to be filled and you could argue with ease that Newcastle are definitely are one of the 3 worst sides in the League at the moment.

The question is though if McClaren was to be shown the exit door then who would take over the poisoned chalice of the Newcastle hot seat. Names such as David Moyes and Rafa Benitez have been mentioned but are they going to want to come in with such few games left in the season.

They would run the risk of taking the impossible job and damaging their own fragile managerial records as they have both come off the back of being sacked in La Liga earlier in the season. Would they put the faith in a Caretaker perhaps. Thankfully for everyone connected to the club, John Carver is nowhere near the backroom staff.

Will McClaren be spared the sack due to no obvious candidate to take over, the club have already tried getting their hero Alan Shearer to do a survival job and look how that panned out. 8 games in charge and he took the club down. I don’t think he’s going to be in a rush to go back to Management anytime soon.

If results keep going against him then I think he’ll be given his P45 and Mike Ashley will have to roll the dice and find a saviour in a bid to keep the club up. They travel to league leaders Newcastle on Monday night needed absolutely nothing less than a win. When you’re down at the bottom it never rains but it pours, a feeling the wally with the brolly knows all too well.