Alan Shearer predicts season of woe for Newcastle

Former captain expects a long season at St James' Park

Alan Shearer says ball retention will be key and that Wayne Rooney ‘has 100 per cent got to start’ (Getty Images)

Newcastle's record goalscorer Alan Shearer fears his old club will spend the entire season in a relegation dogfight.

One of the Magpies' favourite sons is dismayed to see his boyhood team in the Barclays Premier League's bottom three already and without a top-flight win since May.

Manager Alan Pardew is due to take charge of the 700th game of his managerial career against Leicester this weekend but has come under heavy criticism from certain sections of the Newcastle support, as has the club's owner Mike Ashley.

Shearer, who was speaking at Manchester's National Football Museum where he was being inducted into the English Hall of Fame, does not see a light at the end of tunnel for his old club and thinks the remainder of the campaign could be spent in the top flight's lower reaches too.

"I think it will be a long, hard season for Newcastle with the way they've started off," he told Press Association Sport.

"Hopefully Papiss Cisse will be able to start games, if not on Saturday then shortly after that, because it looks like he's the only one who can score goals for them.

"They've been on a tough run since January and their form has been pretty poor. They need results and they need them quick.

"They've sold a lot of their top players over the past few years, which obviously doesn't help, and the atmosphere isn't very good at St James' Park at the moment.

"We just hope that it can change against Leicester on Saturday."

There has been much finger-pointing in the north-east with regards to where the biggest portion of blame should lie.

Newcastle fan Shearer played on Tyneside for a decade and had a short stint as a manager so is better placed than most to judge where the crux of the problem is.

He believes selling their best players year on year is finally catching up with them.

Mathieu Debuchy, Yohan Cabaye and Demba Ba were the latest players to depart the club in recent seasons, and Shearer added: "It doesn't help when you sell your best players; that's stating the obvious.

"It also doesn't help when you're on a poor run and confidence is very, very low.

"The sooner they can get a win this season it will stop everyone talking about them trying to get their first one. They need to do it and they need to do it quickly."

PA