10 Issues McClaren STILL Needs To Resolve At Newcastle Before The Season Kicks Off

10. Work Out A "Plan B"

No-one wants Steve McClaren and Ian Cathro to deviate from their plan to make Newcastle play an attractive brand of passing football but, until it becomes second nature to the Magpies squad - and even after - there needs to be a "Plan B". It may have "only been pre-season", but fairly regularly in the friendlies over the past few weeks Newcastle have started games well for the first 10 minutes, bossed possession, but then come unstuck a little bit. While they continue to find their fluency in this new system, teams are finding their sidewards and slightly-forward diagonal balls fairly predictable to read. If that turns out to be the case once the Premier League season commences - particularly against the top-half sides - then the Magpies need a secondary style that they can switch to in order to keep the opposition guessing. McClaren and Cathro are very highly-rated coaches, and no doubt they will already have a secondary system they can use, but it would have been nice to see it at least attempted a little more often during pre-season.