When speaking to the BBC Radio Five Live Sportsweek programme, former Newcastle United manager Steve McClaren concedes that he made too many big mistakes in his time at St James’ Park.
The former England manager insists that his biggest regret was that he ‘compromised too much’ and didn’t ‘lead and manage’ strongly enough in the earlier part of his tenure.
The 55-year-old lasted just 31 games in the job, 28 of which came in the Premier League and only six of those resulted in victories. The club were subsequently relegated into the Championship, even after Rafa Benitez was brought into the club with just a few games remaining.
McClaren also accepts that their summer recruitment was not as good as it should be, suggesting that they needed more players in certain positions,
“I’m frustrated with my time at Newcastle and especially with the way it ended. I went in with my eyes open and I knew the situation I was getting myself into, but the mistake I made was that I compromised too much.
“You have to go in and lead and manage. I compromised too much especially early on, instead of saying, ‘we need this, we need this, we need this’.
“They’ve gone down because we conceded too many goals and didn’t recruit centre backs, and we didn’t recruit enough strikers, we had injuries and bad luck and the main thing is mentality.
“The mentality of the team was that they would play well against top teams, but they couldn’t win the games they should have won against the lower teams.”
The ex-Middlesbrough coach also revealed that the club had a transfer policy of only signing players under the age of 25. He says that was another big mistake and only hope that Rafa Benitez is given full control over the transfers at the football club,
“They’ve decided to go with Rafa Benitez and I hope they’ve allowed him control of everything. Most importantly he can control recruitment and maybe change the policy of the time which was only recruiting players under 25 and I think that restricted the recruitment process.”
