WATFORD 2 NEWCASTLE UNITED 1

THE timing could hardly have been more apt. At the precise moment that Charlie Austin was marking his Southampton debut by scoring the winner at Old Trafford, Newcastle United were bringing on Emmanuel Riviere in an attempt to turn around a third defeat of the season to Watford.

A £5m Frenchman who has scored one goal in 24 league appearances since the Magpies decided he was the man for them in the summer of 2014 as opposed to a £4m Englishman, with extensive experience of the Premier League, who was deemed of insufficient quality or value to warrant a meaningful approach to his former employers, QPR.

Newcastle never really had a chance of signing Austin this month, but they could have landed him last summer had they been prepared to shelve their desire to ‘do a deal’ and instead paid the going rate for a player who scored 18 Premier League goals in a struggling QPR side last season.

Instead, they splashed out £13m on Alesksandar Mitrovic, presumably because he was deemed to have a better ‘sell-on value’ and hadn’t previously suffered a problem with his knee. Never mind that he seems to need a dozen decent chances in order to score.

With Mitrovic leading the line with a combination of misguided flicks and miscued finishes, and an increasingly erratic Ayoze Perez and the aforementioned Riviere the only alternatives on the substitutes’ bench, Newcastle duly slipped to their fourth successive away defeat by a one-goal margin.

The story was exactly the same as it had been in the FA Cup defeat to Watford, and in last month’s league defeats at West Brom and Arsenal. Newcastle didn’t play badly, and for significant periods, were the better side. Their collective effort and application couldn’t really be faulted.

But they missed a succession of presentable chances at one end and served up their usual defensive lapses at the other. As a result, they remain rooted in the bottom three ahead of a daunting run that will see them face Everton, Chelsea and Manchester City in their next four games.

Steve McClaren can talk of “tremendous” performances all he likes, but unless his side becomes more clinical and effective in front of goal, his words will remain utterly meaningless.

With a week of the transfer window to go, it is imperative a proven centre-forward arrives. Austin has provided Southampton with an immediate boost, Steven Naismith scored on his Norwich City debut at the weekend and Benik Afobe has claimed two goals in three games since making a £10m move to Bournemouth. Meanwhile, Newcastle procrastinate as priceless points are frittered away.

“It’s one step forward and then one step back at the moment,” admitted skipper Fabricio Coloccini. “It feels like it’s the same story again - we had a lot of chances, but couldn’t score.

“We haven’t been playing that badly, but when we’ve been on top of games, we’ve not really taken advantage. It’s something we need to learn, and we need to learn quickly because we cannot allow it to keep happening like it is. We are missing chances, and conceding too many chances to the teams we are playing against. That is something we have to do better.”

Saturday’s missed chances started as early as the third minute, with Rolando Aarons flashing a shot wide of the upright. Aarons was a surprise inclusion for his first league start of the season, with McClaren switching to three centre-halves and a 3-4-2-1 system in an attempt to overcome the absence of a natural left-back.

The ploy wasn’t a disaster – neither Watford goal was really attributable to the defensive reshuffle – but it meant the momentum generated by the previous weekend’s win over West Ham quickly disappeared in the scramble to get to grips with the new system.

Jonjo Shelvey was much less effective as he was forced to play in a deeper role, Aarons didn’t look at all comfortable at wing-back, and Moussa Sissoko was easily neutered as he was shuffled inside.

Even so, Newcastle would still have claimed the lead had Mitrovic not drilled a rushed shot much too close to Heurelho Gomes after fine approach play from Wijnaldum, and they passed up a number of chances to equalise after Jamaal Lascelles halved Watford’s lead with a powerful downward header from a corner.

Mitrovic scuffed a shot wide in the closing stages, but the worst cuplrits were Perez and Yoan Gouffran, who failed to find the target with a pair of dreadful headers when well placed at the heart of the penalty box.

“I thought outside the box, Mitrovic was excellent,” said McClaren. “He’s really improving, he’s a real fighter for us, a focal point and a target.

“He’s someone we need in the team because he brings other players into play, and then we’ve got runners going through. And it’s not one man’s responsibility to put the ball in the back of the net, it’s other people’s as well.”

The brutal reality, though, is that Newcastle have scored fewer away goals than anyone else in the league this season, so are always vulnerable to the kind of lapses that proved so costly on Saturday.

Odion Ighalo might have been marginally offside as he raced on to Troy Deeney’s through ball in the first minute of the second half, but Newcastle’s defence had not switched back on after the interval and were bisected much too easily.

Twelve minutes later, and they were stood like statutes in their own six-yard box as Ighalo prodded the ball down for defender Craig Cathcart to drive past Rob Elliot.

“If we are constantly winning one and then losing one, that’s not going to be good enough,” said Coloccini, who delivered a more realistic assessment of proceedings than his head coach, who claimed his side had played “very, very well”. “We said right from the beginning of the season that we need to be strong at home, and we need to be taking points away.

“That’s the important thing – don’t lose games. It doesn’t always matter if you win, but you have to be taking points and we’re not doing that enough at the moment. Even if it’s just a draw away from home, it’s better than losing like we are just now.”