bit of the beast back

Joe Kinnear is stirring up the warrior spirit for the last half of the campaign:

“I want us to get a bit of the beast back in our performances, certainly in defence.”

We’ve got to be strong again and show a bit of the courage and spirit that we did in the games before Christmas.”

The Magpies are licking their wounds after after falling to Wigan and then being run off the pitch by Liverpool. However this weekends FA Cup match against Hull City will be doubly challenging with the club ravaged by injuries.

Of the upcoming match he said:

“We know at Hull it’s going to be a battle again. I dearly want to stay in the Cup and all the players do too - it’s a real chance for us if we can get through January still in the competition and start getting some of these players back.

“In terms of injuries we have gone backwards since I arrived here. We didn’t have any full-backs to begin with, and now we are back to that, with Habib out for two months and Enrique struggling.

“I won’t know what my team is likely to be until Friday.

“It’s tough, but it’s my job to keep them all up for it. I won’t slate the players individually, but some of the decisions we made (against Liverpool) were poor decisions and we went through that after the game.

“Colly (Coloccini) wasn’t happy aerially, so I switched (Steven) Taylor there, but it was just a matter of having to put a whole new back four out there.

“We’ll be looking for an improvement, whichever team goes out against Hull.”