EMBATTLED boss Alan Pardew believes Newcastle United’s players can rise to the challenge of proving they are Premier League players – by keeping him in a job.

The pressure on Pardew from the club’s fans is only likely to continue at the Liberty Stadium this afternoon if the Magpies fail to end the wait for an elusive first Premier League win of the season.

Despite receiving heavy criticism, the situation has not been helped by the fact Newcastle do not appear to have too many leaders on the pitch to pull them out of trouble.

Fabricio Coloccini, Tim Krul and Cheik Tiote are three of the most senior members of the dressing room, all with important roles to play in trying to ensure a squad full of young talent stays positive in extremely testing times.

The likes of Remy Cabella, a £7m buy from Montpellier, and Emmanuel Riviere, bought for £6m from Monaco, are having to adapt to the English top-flight, with the growing frustrations among the fans a constant issue.

Newcastle have had 17 league defeats and just five wins during a run of a mere 19 points from the last 78 available, so Pardew needs his players to take responsibility out on the pitch and inspire others.

He said: “The characters of players will grow as we go along. This is a difficult club to play for, I think. It can be the greatest club in the world to play for when you are winning, but we are not winning, so it becomes even harder to play for us, and we need to make sure we can handle that.

“These players are going to learn more in the next six weeks, probably, than they have for the last two years of their careers.

“Initially this season, the third or fourth game in prior to Southampton, I could shield them to a degree and I was trying to shield them from the pressure that was coming on me.

“But I think it's too late now. The pressure is going to come through the team, it's coming through the staff, it's coming into the training ground so, although it is directed on me, of course the whole squad is feeling it.

“It's really important for us on Saturday that we give a performance that gets us clapped off at the end, even if it isn't good enough. I think that's what we have got to look for on Saturday. That will be my hope, that our fans clap our players off.”

Newcastle’s policy of buying young, largely foreign, players is being tested to the full, but Pardew does not think it is time to discuss the merits of their blueprint, suggesting it is time for them all to become men on the pitch.

“It’s important we step up to the plate,” he said. “We need to lean on the experienced players. Coloccini has been relegated here. He knows what can happen at this football club and that was a bloody good squad which went down (in 2009).

“This is a much younger squad than that. We haven’t got time to wait for players to come through. We need that to happen now. Remy Cabella has got to start performing now. Our younger players like Sammy Ameobi and Paul Dummett have got to deliver, we aren’t hanging about anymore. You have to deliver.

“But that might not be a bad thing. If we were in this position with six games to go I’d be worried. We’ve got a lot of games to go and we’re getting battle-hardened. We’ve had good aggression on the training ground this week.”

Even if the same group of players can start to show greater resilience, there are still question marks over whether the recruitment drive in the summer was good enough to turn Newcastle into a top ten side – particularly having failed to land another new striker.

“Yes I think it is good enough because I believe in the squad, of course,” said Pardew. “If we had one game to go and we needed three points, I would still believe in the squad. That's how football managers are made.

“It doesn't matter, when that window shuts, that's my team, I have got to make it happen. I have got to produce out of that team. I have got to find a way. That's my job.

“I think it is possible to still have a good season after a bad start. In the past teams have starts like this and have finished really strongly. For us our focus is on the short term and the see where we are when we get to January.

“We really need to be away from the bottom six or seven otherwise in January we might need to do something because we want to be in the top half no doubt and that is our focus.”