Steve McClaren probably feels a bit like an architect who starts sketching out some rough plans but quickly crumples up his piece of paper and throws it in the bin after realising the proportions are not quite right.
Newcastle United’s manager is candid when it comes to acknowledging that he does not know his best team or system yet. It is almost certainly not 4-1-4-1 – the formation experimented with against an impressive Watford – and particularly not with Jack Colback deployed in the midfield anchoring role that patently does not suit him.
“I don’t think we have an identity yet,” said McClaren, whose struggling side have scored only three Premier League goals and taken only two points. “We are still searching for our best team. We’re also searching for the best identity within the personnel we’ve got. We have to find a way of playing.”
At Middlesbrough he initially tried to play attacking, flowing football but the first four games were lost and he switched immediately to a much more defensive approach designed to grind out wins. Is history about to repeat itself? “That’s something we’ll have to look at,” he said, smiling. “Can we be free flowing? Can we be this or that? It’s about results. We have to be pragmatic.”
The problem is that tactics are only as good as the players deployed to carry them out and, despite spending £50m this summer, Newcastle’s squad remains imbalanced. Unless the injured Cheik Tioté can suddenly recapture his long-lost form when he returns, the squad lacks an all-important midfield enforcer. Deep down, McClaren must have suspected Colback was not quite right for the role but, bar taking the radical step of assigning it to Fabricio Coloccini, showing his age at centre-half, there was no real alternative.
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