Newcastle United’s Cheick Tiote: ‘We can not lose our focus’

McClaren, whose side host Leicester City on Saturday, has to reshape a side that has flirted with relegation from the Premier League for a number of seasons and build relations with the media who have had the knives out for owner Mike Ashley and the club.

“When you look at our performances, even against Stoke, we had shots and efforts, 23 in total, eight or nine on target”.

“We’ve been there a long time – it wasn’t easy to get out, but now we’re out and we need to do everything to stay there, or go up”, he said. He’s got to do it consistently, every game, for 95 minutes.

“Some games we’d been playing well but we didn’t win, but now we have and we have to continue in the same way”.

“It’s a slow progression, two steps forward and three back”.

McClaren, though, refused to use that as an excuse and said: “It was a big blow because we felt we were controlling it pretty well with Cheicky and Vurnon”.

“But still that’s no excuses”.

The French winger, who previously underwent surgery on the same hamstring after damaging it at the end of September, has been hit by injury again and will miss the Premier League tie against Leicester.

He reflected: “Congratulations on his record”.

“Granted, I thought the opponents were excellent”.

“They were excellent as a team”.

But their emphatic victory over Norwich at St James’ Park and their battling displays at home to Stoke and at Bournemouth, where they kept clean sheets, although somewhat fortuitously at the Vitality Stadium, have shown signs of an improvement.

Eventually Leicester’s pressure told as Vardy’s latest milestone moment came in first-half stoppage time, the 28-year-old drifting past Sissoko before rifling past Elliot.

“Apart from Mitrovic’s chance just after half-time there weren’t many more after that, Leicester deserve to win”.