Newcastle United legend Alan Shearer has suggested his former club to sign David de Gea to cover for the injured Nick Pope.
The Magpies suffered an embarrassing defeat on Boxing Day when they lost 3-1 against Nottingham Forest at St James’ Park.
The Premier League club’s season has been strongly affected by injuries to their key players with goalkeeper Nick Pope set to miss four months after dislocating his shoulder.
Shearer feels Newcastle could make a move to sign a new goalkeeper in the transfer window next month and he believes David de Gea is the best candidate.
The Spanish goalkeeper has been a free agent after being released by Manchester United last summer.
Shearer said on BBC Radio 5 Live:
‘I would agree goalkeeper and centre forward would be the two main priorities for me.
‘But good luck trying to find a good centre forward that you can bring in for a decent amount of money.’
He was asked if De Gea is someone he would sign for the club: ‘Yeah, I would.
‘I think Newcastle need a goalkeeper, and De Gea is out there. I know the salary would be huge but they wouldn’t have to pay a fee for him.’
Eddie Howe knows his team is suffering because of the long injury list at the club and he made it clear after the defeat against Forest on Boxing Day.
‘Whenever you lose games it is an uncomfortable feeling, when your team is not at its peak,’ Howe said.
‘You deal with a lot of emotions when you don’t get the result you want. I am feeling that. I like to keep my thoughts and analyse properly and make tweaks and changes.
‘My gut feeling is that the answer lies within. The players we have are good enough. We have suffered those injuries. We have not had it easy. We are not at our best physically.
‘We were not quite at our best and when you are not you get punished. There was a lot of good first half but the last action or pass was missing and that was frustrating. We wanted to make it 2-0 and in a commanding position.
‘It has been an intense period. The players have physically given everything and we have acknowledged we have not been at our best and that is all we can do. We can now return to the training pitch for the first time in what feels like months. We need training ground time to refine missing parts of our game.
‘Some of our decision making was off, positioning or technically. It wasn’t a big tactical issue, we didn’t deal with moments in the game.
‘I’ll be prepared to make any change that I think can benefit either the performance or the result and of course players are accountable for what they deliver.
‘No amount of credit in the bank is big enough, you have to earn everything you get from the game. I’m a firm believer in that so players know they have to perform and we have to change our short-term form for sure.
‘It will be nice to build up to games and training. I think we have suffered not having training ground time. And the inability to rotate the team has caught up with us.’
Newcastle are currently 7 points behind fourth placed Tottenham, who have played a game less.