WHEN Alan Pardew scanned this week’s newspaper headlines relating to Newcastle United, he could be forgiven for thinking he had stepped back in time.

Training-ground dressing downs, accusations of players lacking commitment, challenging questions about the role being played by skipper Fabricio Coloccini. The more things change at Newcastle, including the identity of the manager, the more things remain the same.

Pardew spent the latter half of his reign dealing with the same seemingly irresolvable issues that are now plaguing Steve McClaren, and could be forgiven for thinking he is well off at the opposite end of the country presiding over Newcastle’s opponents this afternoon, Crystal Palace.

Yet on at least one of the scores that have dominated this week’s news agenda, he is culpable for a fair bit of the mess.

Coloccini has always looked an uneasy captain, and sources close to McClaren suggest the current head coach is close to the end of his tether with the Argentinian. If not exactly singled out for special criticism this week, Coloccini’s seniority means no one was left in any doubt as to who McClaren was referring to when he spoke of the club’s most experienced figures letting themselves down.

Coloccini will retain the captain’s armband at Selhurst Park this afternoon, but has been made aware that his leadership must improve if he is not to find himself demoted. Never the most vocal of skippers, the feeling within the Magpies’ coaching staff is that the 33-year-old is hardly ‘leading by example’ at the moment either.

“I wasn’t happy with anybody’s leadership last week,” said McClaren, who was understandably reluctant to single out anyone for public criticism when he held his weekly press conference yesterday afternoon. “You can’t play football silent, and that is what we did.

“Some people have questioned Colo, but I would say that in the previous game against Bournemouth, he got blocks, headers and tackles and his performance was excellent. He would have been the man of the match had it not been for Rob Elliot.”

Nevertheless, Coloccini’s suitability for the captaincy role has been questioned ever since his public dalliance with his former club San Lorenzo in January 2013 and his stated desire to return to his native Argentina at the time.

He was already wearing the armband by then, with Pardew having made him skipper ahead of the 2011-12 season, even though he admitted at the time that the defender was hardly the most forceful or vociferous presence within the dressing room.

Back then, there was a theory that Pardew went for Coloccini because his previous captain, Kevin Nolan, had been part of a powerful dressing-room group containing the likes of Joey Barton and Steve Harper that infuriated Mike Ashley because of its willingness to speak up against him, particularly when it came to contractual matters.

In that context, Coloccini might well have been viewed as a safe pair of hands, yet in the subsequent four years, it could be argued that the defender’s laid-back, somewhat unfocused attitude has permeated throughout the rest of the squad.

He came close to leaving again last summer when he was offered an opportunity to rejoin Pardew at Crystal Palace, and for all that he might profess otherwise now, it is easy to imagine that McClaren would not have been too disappointed at the opportunity to start afresh in terms of dressing-room hierarchy.

Instead, not only was Coloccini retained, but he was also offered a new one-year contract extension, with the option of a further 12 months after that. With that in mind, it would have been exceptionally hard for McClaren to strip to South American of the captaincy, so the current campaign began with the status quo.

Perhaps it should be no wonder, then, that many of the failings that were apparent last season in terms of fragility, a lack of commitment and an absence of team spirit are apparent again with Coloccini seemingly unable to do anything about them.

Some previous Newcastle captains would have been leading this week’s inquests into last weekend’s abject performance against Leicester. Coloccini was bearing the brunt of them, and even though McClaren claims to have been satisfied with his subsequent reaction, this surely has to be his final chance to live up to his billing.

“He’s been very good,” said McClaren. “Very good. But training is only training, and we can only prepare. We had a bad weekend, but the reaction has been good and the training has been feisty.”

Newcastle will need that feistiness when they return to action in South London later today – ideally, with their captain and supposed defensive talisman leading the way.