Clark’s goals highlight Newcastle's lack of threat

A lot has been written and debated about Newcastle United’s off-field situation in the last few days, with Rio Ferdinand making a particularly dull-headed contribution to the conversation as he attempted to defend Mike Ashley’s catastrophic ownership in his role as a BT Sport pundit on Saturday night, but when it comes to assessing the Magpies’ on-field problems, Clark’s presence alongside some of the Premier League’s most prolific finishers says it all.

We are almost at the middle of January, and Newcastle’s second-highest goalscorer is a centre-half who has failed to start 13 of his club’s 22 league games. Managers might talk enthusiastically about the value of a defender ‘chipping in with the odd goal’, but Rafael Benitez cannot be happy that Clark’s header at Chelsea at the weekend means he has scored more goals than Ayoze Perez and Joselu, and also exceeded the tally racked up by Matt Ritchie, Jonjo Shelvey, Kenedy, Yoshinori Muto and Mo Diame combined.

“It’s a great feeling scoring at Stamford Bridge, and running to the travelling fans and celebrating,” said Clark, who has also found the net against Arsenal and Burnley this season. “It’s obviously nice to score, but when the result doesn’t go your way, it puts a bit of a downer on me scoring again.”

Or to put it another way, isn’t it about time someone started helping him out? In an ideal world, Newcastle would finally break their age-old transfer record this month in order to sign a proven centre-forward. Despite Ferdinand’s attempts to rewrite history though, Newcastle do not operate in an ideal world with Ashley at the helm, so the chances of a top-class striker arriving in the next two-and-a-half weeks are practically non-existent.

That means a continued reliance on Salomon Rondon, whose chequered recent injury record is a huge source of concern given the lack of attacking alternatives in the squad, and a need for Benitez to find some way of increasing the effectiveness of the other forwards and midfielders currently at his disposal.

Muto’s return from the Asian Cup should help, but Benitez will be racking his brains ahead of Saturday’s seismic relegation battle with Cardiff City to see if there is anything he can do to make the likes of Perez, Ritchie, Kenedy and Christian Atsu more of a goalscoring threat.

On Saturday, Perez wasted the one clear-cut chance that came his way, shooting wide in the first half after Rondon flicked Martin Dubravka’s long clearance into his path. Ritchie, playing at left wing-back, can be excused a lack of involvement in the final third, but for all his occasional flashes of talent, Atsu has not really looked like scoring all season while Kenedy has lost his way markedly since returning on loan from Stamford Bridge.

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Perhaps Benitez is missing a trick in terms of how he lines up his team? Perhaps the aforementioned players are simply not good enough? Either way, while a lack of success against a team like Chelsea can be excused, Newcastle will be in serious trouble if they are as ineffective in front of goal when Cardiff visit St James’ Park this weekend.

“We are quite close to being where we want to be,” said Benitez. “We have seen that in a lot of the games against the big teams. When we play against the top sides, we have been close in every game, apart from maybe Liverpool in the last game. Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United – we have always been in the games.

“The team has played well and we have had chances, but the final decision in the final third is the decisive thing. If you want to get that right, you have to spend the money. For these players, clubs like Chelsea pay £40m, £50m, £100m, whatever. That makes the difference.

“When you are working so hard, but then one player like Willian makes the difference, you cannot do too much. You have to create chances, and we did that. But they (the top strikers) take the chances and, for you, it is much more difficult.”

That might sound like defeatism, but Benitez would couch it as the kind of realism he has been trying to convey all season. Newcastle’s latest outing against top-six opposition followed a familiar pattern, with the Magpies displaying commendable energy, commitment and organisation, and giving as good as they got for the majority of the game.

Ultimately, though, they were simply not good enough, and their record against top-six teams this season now reads: Played eight, lost eight. Benitez is right when he says that record will not determine Newcastle’s fate, but their failure to pick up anything against more than a quarter of the division means they have practically no room for error when they take on teams in the bottom half.

The Magpies still have to host Cardiff, Huddersfield, Burnley, Crystal Palace and Southampton this season – given they now find themselves back in the bottom three, they might well have to win all of those games to survive.

“What I can see is that we have to stay calm,” said Benitez. “It is a long-distance race, and still we have to win more games. I have confidence that if we continue working like we have here (at Chelsea), we will have chances to get points against teams that will be closer to us. That is it. We have to be better than three teams. If we play like this, we will do it.

“Whatever happens, this squad can stay up. If we work like this and play with the same passion, intensity and work rate, we will definitely have chances to get points against a lot of teams. We know we can beat some of the teams we still have to play, and in the end, that will make the difference. We have to beat the teams at the bottom of the table.”

Newcastle could not have made a worse start at Stamford Bridge, with Pedro lofting a ninth-minute finish over Dubravka after racing on to David Luiz’s remarkable long pass, but Benitez’s side successfully regrouped and dominated the closing stages of the first half.

Perez should have equalised, but the Magpies levelled five minutes before the interval when Clark stole ahead of Luiz to head home Ritchie’s corner.

With Eden Hazard patently not enjoying his role as a central striker, Chelsea lacked fluency, but their quality shone through 12 minutes after the break.

Hazard rolled a square ball into Willian’s path, and the Brazilian stepped inside DeAndre Yedlin before curling into the far corner.

That proved to be that, although Dubravka was forced to make a smart save shortly after the hour mark after Willian broke on to another long ball from Luiz,

Newcastle’s only real chance of a second equaliser coming to nothing when Rondon headed Javier Manquillo’s late cross wide of the post, and there was frustration in stoppage-time when a bungled short-corner routine meant the Magpies passed up an opportunity to put the ball into the box.

“t’s a massive game against Cardiff,” said Clark. “We have the attitude and character already, it’s just about the fine details. We’ve been in the bottom three before and shown we can get out of it. We’ll show we can do it again, I have no doubt about that.”