Pardew looks for strong finish

06 March 2011 14:30
Newcastle boss Alan Pardew is hoping his big players can serve up a rousing end to the season after the nerves returned to Tyneside. The Magpies looked home and hosed in the quest to book their place in next season's Barclays Premier League when a 2-0 win at Birmingham on February 15 took them to 35 points with 11 games still to play. But successive home fixtures against Bolton and Everton have yielded just a single point, and Saturday's 2-1 reverse at the hands of the Toffees left Pardew's men still sitting in ninth place in the table, but just six points clear of the drop zone. Pardew said: "We have got some outstanding players at this football club and one or two did themselves no harm on Saturday in the squad for going forward. "But we are going to need our best players for these last nine games to try to finish as high as we can, and that's what we are going to do. "But you can't play a game at this level and lose the quality of players we did - Joey Barton, then we lost Ireland, then Enrique on the pitch. For all the effort and commitment we put in, sometimes that's just too many players to lose."

Source: PA