Pardew vows to fight on

Newcastle - Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew will continue to fight against his critics and has no intention of quitting the struggling Premier League club amid prolonged and hostile fan reaction.

Newcastle sit just one point above bottom-of-the-table Burnley with three points and no wins from six games in what has been a horror start to their Premier League campaign.

The 2-2 draw against Hull City at St James' Park last month was played against a backdrop of deep unrest with many supporters in the 50,000-strong crowd brandishing posters reading 'Sack Pardew'.

"I'm a manager that's thick-skinned. I don't ignore it and it's not that it doesn't not penetrate me because of course it does," Pardew, the Premier League's second longest-serving manager after Arsenal's Arsene Wenger, told a news conference on Thursday.

"It makes me want to prove people wrong. I need to win games, it's quite simple really. After the games it becomes difficult because we haven't won.

"The most important thing is that I'm putting the fight in the players and they're showing the fight on the pitch."

The north-east club's only victories this season have come in the League Cup but last week's 3-2 cup victory against Crystal Palace, a result Pardew had been keen to build on, was followed by a 1-0 league loss to Stoke City on Monday.

"I don't think anyone who watched the Stoke game would say their wasn't fight in the team," the defiant 53-year-old added.

"(We needed) a bit of quality and a bit more flamboyance in the team, and a few more chances created.

"There's the fight though and we need to carry that to every game to the end of the season. I've had one game to go, two games to go from the start of the season. I have to ignore those sort of thoughts.

"I spoke to the chief executive and we discussed ways of trying to help the team and trying to find a solution to get this team to its capacity."

Newcastle travel to fifth-placed Swansea City on Saturday.