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Mike Ashley will stick with John Carver next season out of a sense of loyalty – according to Tony Pulis, who says Newcastle United remain an “enormous club” that he was flattered to be linked with.

Carver’s United finally stopped a run of successive defeats on Saturday, but joy at keeping themselves out of the bottom three on a day which saw Leicester and Sunderland leap above Newcastle in the Premier League, is tempered by the fact the Magpies remain in the thick of the battle to avoid demotion to the Championship.

They head to QPR on Saturday desperately needing to match Hull’s result at Spurs at the very least.

All of that means next season’s plans have been shoved onto the back burner – but the club’s insistence that they haven’t drawn up an alternative shortlist, and won’t until the summer, means Carver remains in the frame.

Indeed he remains more than that according to Pulis, who is an experienced boss with close links to former manager Alan Pardew. The West Brom chief’s thoughts were illuminating after a day in which his side had – temporarily at least – dumped Newcastle into the bottom three for nine minutes.

“I don’t think there’ll be any change at this football club, I think Mike Ashley is very loyal to the people he appoints and although I don’t know the politics around the place, the one thing he has done is to stick with his managers,” he said.

Pulis had been linked himself when Pardew left. He said: “It’s a wonderful club, a wonderful place to play and a wonderful stadium.

“The support is absolutely fantastic, all they want is a winning team. That’s the bottom line, they want to come and watch a team on Saturday that wins football matches. If you do that for them then great, but it’s the same every-where.

“This is an enormous club, but it has to get back to being an enormous club. The only way to do that is to put a team on the pitch which can compete with other enormous clubs.”

For Carver there are more immediate priorities. Having felt stung at the way his claim that he believes he is the best coach in the Premier League was taken out of context, he delivered a brisk four-minute press conference and told Sky that one of the lessons he had learned this week was to “keep his gob shut”.

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He said that his team had earned a “huge” point and had proved itself up for the fight during a difficult afternoon.

He said: “A point might be huge but the more important thing was the performance. There’s people, and I include myself in this, that are up for the fight here.

“This was the biggest game since we lost to Aston Villa in 2009 but it now goes on to QPR. The destiny is in our hands and we have to deal with it.

“There was a lot said after the Leicester game last week, rightly so, but I certainly think there was a response, from the players and definitely from the fans.

“It was actually like being back in a football stadium again where the only thing that mattered was football. That was nice and pleasing. I think you saw the reaction from the fans and it affected the reaction of the players.

“They went 1-0 down to a set-play to a team of giants and that can make you disillusioned like we were last week against Leicester. But to show the determination to get back was so encouraging.”

Newcastle are boosted by the return of Papiss Cisse for the final two games and the striker insists he will be fit to start at QPR.