Wijnaldum urges fellow Magpies to chip in with goals

REUTERS – Newcastle United midfielder Georginio Wijnaldum has implored his team mates to help ease the goal-scoring burden being placed upon himself, Aleksandar Mitrovic and Ayoze Perez with the trio bagging 10 of the side’s 12 league goals this season.

The Magpies, who have just one win in 11 league games, are 18th in the standings and will be looking to climb out of the relegation zone when they face Bournemouth on Saturday, but have failed to score in seven of their 13 games in all competitions.

“The relationships are starting to develop. The three of us are starting to get to know each other and are feeling more comfortable together, but it can’t only come from us,” Wijnaldum was quoted as saying by the British media.

“If we’re not scoring, it can’t be a situation where we can’t win games as a team. It’s important that other people are scoring as well.

“If a team is too reliant on a small number of players to score, it makes it difficult. It’s not good if the team can only score between two or three players,” he added.

Defender Chancel Mbemba, on the other hand, was pleased with Newcastle’s defensive solidity in Saturday’s goalless stalemate with Stoke City, as the team managed just its second league clean sheet of the season.

“It’s good for us as defenders but good for the whole team as well,” Mbemba told the club’s website (www.nufc.co.uk).

“Keeping a clean sheet gives everyone confidence that we’re not going to concede goals too easily anymore.

“We need to take this forward now and try to keep more because if we do that, then we are going to pick up points,” he added.

(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; Editing by John O’Brien)