Football
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Alan Pardew: Newcastle should be 'in and around the top 10'

Alan Pardew admits his Newcastle team is a long way from where he wants it to be.

The 53-year-old was handed a little breathing space last weekend when Gabriel Obertan's first goal for two years finally secured an opening Premier League victory of the season against Leicester after seven previous attempts. But if Obertan's strike eased some of the pressure on the manager's shoulders, it did so only briefly with the Magpies still languishing inside the bottom three ahead of a difficult trip to Tottenham on Sunday.

Pardew insists he is not losing sleep over the Magpies' current predicament, but he knows they are still well short of where they should be, and that is a matter he is desperate to address as a matter of urgency.

He said with a smile: "I sleep better than one or two in this room. But I'm just focused on getting this team as high up the league [as possible].

"This team should be in and around the top 10, fighting for the top six or seven -- if everything falls your way even higher than that, which happened to us before. But that feels a long way off at the moment.''

That fifth-placed finish at the end of the 2011-12 season does indeed seem a long time ago, and the trials and tribulations through which Pardew has been since have at times been draining.

However, he is adamant he has never doubted himself and his ability to piece together a team from a seemingly ever-changing squad, something which has perhaps never been more of a challenge than in recent weeks.

Pardew said: "You try to plan and be thorough and test your staff and players to give your team the best chance of winning. Our planning and preparation have been thorough, and that's what you have to do.''

Newcastle's reward for that top-five finish was an unexpected European campaign, but it proved to be one which was beyond the limited depth of squad available to the manager.

Their league form suffered alarmingly as a result of the demands of that Europa League campaign, although Pardew does not expect Tottenham, who beat Greek side Asteras Tripolis 5-1 in the same competition on Thursday evening, to be quite as stretched.

He said: "Spurs are shielded by the depth of their squad. It must be difficult to manage that group because there isn't a great deal of difference between about 20 players. The manager can pick a completely different XI and it won't be far away in terms of quality from the XI he picked on Thursday.

"What you find in the Europa League is that you haven't got the funds to have the squad. I think Spurs are in a good position to challenge in the Europa League.''

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