Pardew wants bigger Magpies personalities
Alan Pardew wants bigger personalities at Newcastle United as he seeks to turn around their woeful start to the new season.
Newcastle remain without a Premier League win so far this term and sit 18th in the table.
Pardew's men did display impressive resilience to twice come from a goal down in a 2-2 draw at Swansea City last Saturday, but a return of four points from seven games has prompted criticism of Pardew and his team.
With their transfer policy built around securing more financially affordable deals, Newcastle have focused on signing young players in recent times.
The club have not signed a player over the age of 27 since bringing in Mathieu Debuchy, who has since left for Arsenal, last January and Pardew feels Newcastle require more experience, with opposition sides still viewing them as a notable scalp.
"Our policy here has been the same since I've been at the club – we have bought players we think have good market value and that means mainly the younger players," Pardew said in quotes reported by the Evening Chronicle.
"I've had to deal with younger players and some have been massively successful and some haven't. At the moment we are not having as much success as we've had.
"We've produced some fantastic players for this club and we need to start producing a few more.
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"I didn't think we were strong enough in the last part of the [last] season and that's been held against me that I've been making excuses, but I just felt that we needed more and we didn’t have it after the loss of [midfielder Yohan] Cabaye [in January].
"This club needs big players because we are a big scalp for any team.
"For Swansea, we would be a big scalp. Forget where we are in the league. We need big players and our big players need to stand up.
"We also need to create more big players and that's what we are trying to do."