WHEN Jonjo Shelvey left Swansea City to join Newcastle United in January, he claimed his fall from grace at the Liberty Stadium had resulted in him “going home and feeling down around the house”. Goodness knows what his domestic feelings are like now then.

If things were bad in the weeks leading up to Shelvey’s £12m switch to Tyneside, there is every chance they are about to get a whole lot worse. Shelvey meets his former side for the first time on Saturday with Newcastle six points adrift of safety with six games remaining. The gap will increase to nine if Norwich beat Sunderland in Saturday’s lunch-time kick-off.

Given that Shelvey has been a Newcastle player for less than three months, it would be unfair to pin too much of the blame for the current chaos at his door. Yet in many ways, the 24-year-old’s position is indicative of the mess that the Magpies have got themselves into.

He might have been an emerging England international when Newcastle signed him in January, but Shelvey was the wrong player at the wrong time. The club desperately needed defenders and a striker; they signed three midfielders with Andros Townsend and Henri Saivet also arriving at St James’ Park.

Shelvey’s debut was impressive enough, with the midfielder providing a sensational long-range pass to set up a goal in a 2-1 win over West Ham, but since then he has contributed to just one victory from his ten subsequent appearances.

His form, like that of his team-mates, has been average at best, and for all that he has taken over the captain’s armband, even his leadership qualities and supposed ability to extract the maximum from his team-mates have been difficult to discern. Not someone who is interested in building a relationship with the media or attempting to explain himself to fans, his status as skipper has led to less-than-flattering comparisons with Michael Owen, the last player to take Newcastle down.

Yesterday, it emerged that Shelvey’s contract does not contain a relegation clause, so the Magpies will have to continue shelling out around £80,000-a-week to pay him in the event of relegation. Shelvey, according to well-positioned sources, wants to stay at St James’ no matter what. Whether the club would want him in the Championship, along with a few more of their highest-earning players, is open to debate.

The sorry situation is a far cry from the optimistic tone that was being struck when Shelvey arrived in mid-January – at his first press conference, the midfielder said “I need to knuckle down now and get my mind and body right, and hopefully get in the Euro 2016 squad” – and his former team-mates at Swansea could be forgiven for deriving a degree of satisfaction from his plight.

Not so according to Jack Cork, who will face him on Saturday, although it is understood that not all of Shelvey’s former colleagues are as equanimous as the midfielder.

“He wasn’t featuring in the team, and I’m not sure if it was his decision or the club’s,” said Cork. “He has gone to Newcastle to play and that happens a lot in football. He made his decision and you can’t really predict how it’s going to go.

“Look at the season this year – Leicester are winning the league and Chelsea have had a bad season. You can’t predict how it’s going to go when you go somewhere.

“We got on well when he was here, and I think he’s done well up there on a personal level. I think everyone’s given him good reviews – it’s just a shame how results have gone.

“It’ll be nice to see him, good to play against him and it will be a good battle. I was fine with him. I thought he was a good lad. He’s always had ability on the ball and the talent to make something special happen.”

Newcastle desperately need that ‘something special’ to occur at the weekend. After a run of ‘must-win’ matches that have ended in either a draw or a defeat, Saturday’s home game surely represents Newcastle’s final opportunity to kick-start the kind of run that will be required to haul them to safety.

As one of the senior figures within the squad, Shelvey has to begin to fulfil the leadership role he was signed to perform. That Jamaal Lascelles, an inexperienced defender with precious little first-team experience, was the first player to put his head above the parapet and call out his team-mates’ failings at the weekend says much about the lack of responsibility within the Newcastle squad.

Shelvey, with his obvious dissatisfaction at the way he was treated at Swansea, likes to regard himself as a senior figure. It is time for him to live up to that title.