Ahead of Saturday’s trip to Crystal Palace, United sit second from bottom of the Premier League with just a point to their name, while they also exited the Carabao Cup to Championship outfit Nottingham Forest.
Starting the season slowly is nothing new for Newcastle, though, as Anderson – who spent ten years of his career at St. James’ Park – can attest. The Irishman was part of the side in 1987/88 who picked up just five points from the first 21 available, only to end the campaign in eighth place.
Under Willie McFaul, the Magpies clawed themselves away from the relegation zone before posting their best finish in over a decade, and BBC Newcastle summariser Anderson is hopeful that – more than 30 years on – Rafa Benítez’s charges can pull off something similar.
“It wasn’t great – we didn’t start that season particularly well. We only had one win, but it’s like everything else, and I think this side’s got it as well – there was a togetherness, and a belief, that we were good enough to get out of it, and so it showed by the end of the season,” he told nufc.co.uk. “A lot of people – similar to this season – were saying, ‘We’re doomed, we’re in for a relegation battle.’ But, if you can string two, three or four wins together, that self-belief comes back and you start believing you can win games and go on a run. That’s what we did that season and that’s what this side did last season, as well. We hadn’t won in ten, but all of a sudden we went on a little run and the belief started to come back, the confidence started to come back, and that’s what we need to do again this season.
“I think when the majority of supporters saw the fixture list, they thought the most we’d have at this stage would probably have been three points – and those three points would probably come at Cardiff. The Cardiff game was poor – it was a poor game between two poor sides on the day. But, I don’t buy into everyone being ‘doom and gloom’ after five games. We’ve still got 33 games left to play, and we showed last season that there’s a belief and a togetherness to get out of it. And I still believe there’s enough to get out of it again this season, to be quite honest.”
Having played four of last season’s top six so far, the Magpies are now gearing up for back-to-back clashes against more moderate opposition.
Both Palace and next week’s visitors to St. James’ Park, Leicester City, have lost three times in their first five games, and Anderson underlined the significance of Benítez’s side breaking their winning duck at some point before the end of the month.
“I think you have to look at the next two. You have to target games in batches, and say, ‘Right. These are the games we need to get something out of.’ The two coming up – Palace, Leicester – we have to be getting points out of them. It’s not easy going to Palace but I think we have enough to cause them problems – I think we have enough to get a result there. Leicester haven’t had the best of starts, and we have to be targeting that one as well. We can only keep saying for so long that the start hasn’t been great, and that with the teams we’ve had to play it was always going to be difficult. Somewhere along the line, you have to start picking up points, and it needs to start this weekend, against Palace.
“I’d like to see us be more positive at Palace – playing on the front foot and pressing high up the park right from the off, rather than 15 or 20 minutes into the game, just trying to keep tight and trying to play our way into it. I’d like us to get people forward, look to score goals and really put them under pressure, instead of us sitting back and absorbing it and trying to hit them on the break.”
