Alan Shearer on Newcastle’s current performance: “Main objective is to get back to Premier League”

Coral football ambassador Alan Shearer sat down exclusively with our very own Simon Clare to give his latest thoughts on Newcastle’s current performance after United suffered a blip.

The Magpies, a club we’re proud to be official betting partners of, exited the EFL Cup at the quarter-finals on penalties after losing in the Championship to Blackburn Rovers.

As an unashamed member of the Toon Army, Alan retains total faith in Rafa Benitez’s boys. Listen and watch his thoughts below, or read the best quotes from Shearer we’ve summarised underneath.

“Their main objective still has to be getting back into the Premier League”

“I’m still confident. Their main objective still has to be getting back into the Premier League,” Shearer said.

“I was at the Newcastle v Blackburn game at St James’ Park last Saturday and they were pretty poor. Blackburn were the better team and Blackburn deserved to win.

“Rafa changed the team around that won so impressively at Leeds the week beforehand and that backfired, but then again I thought at least we’ve got one manager who is taking cup competition seriously, which hasn’t always been the case here in the past few years.

“They then go to Hull on Tuesday and played well, creating chances and didn’t take them. And then they got the goal to go 1-0 up in extra-time and then it all sort of backfired after that. If you don’t take chances, then you don’t win the game, and the penalties they were pretty poor.”

“It’s important they get back to winning ways”

“It’s back to the league and back to Nottingham Forest, and that’s a big game now because they’ve been beaten twice in a row. It’s important they get back to winning ways.”

When asked about how Benitez has approached managing in the unfamiliar environment of the Championship, Alan was full of plaudits for Newcastle’s Spanish boss.

“I think he’s done an excellent job. I think it was a tough start the first two games,” Shearer added, also praising Benitez for calming players and fans down and getting the Magpies’ campaign back on track after early jitters.

“Brighton are a little bit closer than he’d want,” Shearer continued. “The game at Notts Forest is a decent chance to get back to winning ways. It always has been and is their priority to get back to the Premier League.”

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Check out more exclusive video interviews from Alan in the Shearer says archive.

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