HAD things turned out differently in the second half of last season, Jack Colback might have been part of the England squad that is preparing to face the Republic of Ireland in a friendly tomorrow afternoon.

As it is, he will be on holiday reflecting on a miserable few months, but despite his side’s struggles as they narrowly avoided dropping into the Championship, the Newcastle midfielder remains confident he is part of a club with ambitions to match his own.

Last August, Colback received his maiden call-up to Roy Hodgson’s England squad. A calf injury sustained in training meant he was forced to sit out the matches with Norway and Switzerland, but having taken the bold move to swap Wearside for Tyneside a few months earlier, his career trajectory appeared to be on an upward curve.

Nine months on, however, and things look rather different. While Colback’s individual form might have remained relatively consistent last season, Newcastle’s fortunes plummeted after Alan Pardew departed in December, with his successor, John Carver, presiding over a club-record run of eight successive defeats.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Colback has dropped off the international radar, with the likes of Fabian Delph, Ryan Mason and Ross Barkley having established themselves ahead of him in the pecking order.

In the vast majority of cases, a player’s international prospects are inextricably linked to the fortunes of his club side, and as he looks ahead to a new campaign that will almost certainly see Newcastle come under the control of Steve McClaren, who is expected to be confirmed as head coach next week, Colback remains confident the Magpies can help him achieve what he covets.

“I still feel as though I can achieve everything I want to here,” said the Newcastle-born midfielder. “That was a huge reason why I signed – it wasn’t as though I only came because it was my boyhood club and the team I supported as a kid.

“I saw it as a club with an awful lot of potential there. I want to be playing for a successful team, and a team that’s coming into St James’ Park and winning games. We beat Chelsea and Liverpool (last season), and we need to get back to a level where we’re able to compete with those sort of teams, especially at home.

“You have to be realistic, and we’re not going to be challenging for the league or anything like that any time soon, but you want to be able to compete in every game. That should be the bare minimum for a club like this.”

As ever in the summer hiatus, Newcastle fans are questioning what direction their club will head in next season under the continued control of Mike Ashley.

On the one hand, the Ashley camp are making positive noises to suggest they will increase their level of investment and sign players with Premier League experience to ensure there is no repeat of last season’s struggles. On the other, however, Newcastle supporters can be forgiven for treating such suggestions with a high degree of suspicion given the lengthy list of broken promises in the past.

Colback accepts there has to be a degree of realism when assessing what Newcastle could be capable of next season, but the 25-year-old also insists the building blocks for a successful club are in place.

“It definitely still feels like a club where, if everything went right, it could be incredible,” he said. “Everything’s here for that to happen – there are great foundations for the club to go wherever it wants to go.

“You’ve got to be sensible with that because there are clubs that have overstretched in the past and that are in a mess now. There’s a certain level that’s realistic to get to, although that’s out of my hands. It’s a club with potential, and it deserves to be higher up the league than it has been. Hopefully, we can have a right good go next season.”

If nothing else, having been part of the Sunderland side that pulled off the ‘Great Escape’ under Gus Poyet in 2014, Colback is determined to avoid a hat-trick of relegation battles next term.

“It was a whirlwind first season for me,” he said. “To be honest, I thought I was moving away from relegation battles when I signed here!

“It is what it is though, and that’s the thing about football, it’s so unpredictable. You can only control so much in football.

“It was an up and down season. It started okay, and then we had some fantastic results beating the likes of Chelsea and Liverpool. I got to experience what the fans can be like here, but then obviously the second half of the season was a massive low.

“You learn from those situations, and hopefully get stronger from it. You just hope that things like that don’t happen again.”