For understandable reasons, Kevin Keegan does not “even want to think about defeat” by Fulham today, but the Newcastle United manager has rejected the suggestion that his spell out of football has contributed to his side’s recent difficulties. After three years away from the dugout, Keegan accepts that criticism cannot readily be repelled until a victory is secured.

While last Monday’s 1-1 draw away to Birmingham City demonstrated that Newcastle’s players have the stomach to compete in a relegation battle, Keegan has presided over a sequence of nine matches without a win since replacing Sam Allardyce in January. That run has allowed negativity to thrive, even if Keegan is adamant that he is “really enjoying” his return to St James’ Park.

After leaving Manchester City in 2005, Keegan hurled himself into his Soccer Circus project in Glasgow and has admitted that he did not watch a live match during that period. There are those who claim that such minimal involvement in the sport can hardly prepare him for life in the Barclays Premier League, although they ignore his previous stint on Tyneside.

“I don’t think it has taken me a while to get up to speed,” Keegan said. “But until we win a game, people can fire anything at you. No one fired it at me last time when I came here and had been in Marbella for seven years playing golf. If I had gone into a club I did not know it would have been very different. I would have been trying to find out about the area and everything else.

“But it is still the same people round here. Not players, because there’s only Steve Harper [the goalkeeper] left, but I’m talking about staff. There are so many [recognisable] people around, I felt I was coming into a club I really knew. You learn about the players – any manager has to – and you hope you’re going to get an initial bounce, but that didn’t happen here.

“That doesn’t mean to say we’ve done many things wrong. We’ve had games where we should have got results and we should have had that win long before now, but everything people label you when you are not getting results you have got to take. You leave yourselves open to that criticism and you don’t have any real choice but to take it and get on with it.

“But it’s like I’ve told the players; we are the ones who have the ammunition to fight back. I have told them, any of them who are feeling the pressure, the good news here is that when you turn it round, it will be twice as big the other way. It always has been.”

Fulham’s last away victory was against Newcastle 18 months ago and any repeat would be intolerable for the home side. “It is a massive game against Fulham and a club like Newcastle should beat them 100 times out of 100,” Gérémi, the midfield player, said. “We know we should beat them but we are not complacent.”