Steve McClaren probably feels a bit like an architect who starts sketching out some rough plans but quickly crumples up his piece of paper and throws it in the bin after realising the proportions are not quite right.

Newcastle United’s manager is candid when it comes to acknowledging that he does not know his best team or system yet. It is almost certainly not 4-1-4-1 – the formation experimented with against an impressive Watford – and particularly not with Jack Colback deployed in the midfield anchoring role that patently does not suit him.

“I don’t think we have an identity yet,” said McClaren, whose struggling side have scored only three Premier League goals and taken only two points. “We are still searching for our best team. We’re also searching for the best identity within the personnel we’ve got. We have to find a way of playing.”

At Middlesbrough he initially tried to play attacking, flowing football but the first four games were lost and he switched immediately to a much more defensive approach designed to grind out wins. Is history about to repeat itself? “That’s something we’ll have to look at,” he said, smiling. “Can we be free flowing? Can we be this or that? It’s about results. We have to be pragmatic.”

The problem is that tactics are only as good as the players deployed to carry them out and, despite spending £50m this summer, Newcastle’s squad remains imbalanced. Unless the injured Cheik Tioté can suddenly recapture his long-lost form when he returns, the squad lacks an all-important midfield enforcer. Deep down, McClaren must have suspected Colback was not quite right for the role but, bar taking the radical step of assigning it to Fabricio Coloccini, showing his age at centre-half, there was no real alternative.

After three months in charge the depth of such structural squad flaws is fully dawning on the former England coach, even if he continues to believe that he has the nucleus of a good team. “We came into a new experience and thought: ‘Phwoar, let’s go’ and then, suddenly it’s: ‘Woah, what’s happening there?’” conceded McClaren. “We have to turn it round. But I still say this is a good squad, with good players. Not winning adds to the tension and pressure and fuels the criticism we’re going to receive but to win, you need belief.”

Newcastle had none in a first half during which they simply surrendered to their newly promoted visitors. Quique Sánchez Flores cleverly switched his formation to 4-4-2, ensuring that the excellent Odion Ighalo and Troy Deeney bullied Coloccini and company throughout while persistently pulling their opponents out of shape. By half-time Ighalo had scored twice, taking his 2015 league tally to 20 in 24 games, and he could easily have had a couple more.

A second-half improvement resulted in Daryl Janmaat – Newcastle’s best player and, although a right-back, their biggest attacking threat – reducing the deficit but an equaliser would not quite come. “We knew they were under pressure,” said Ighalo. “We knew not to be afraid. We pushed and pushed and there was a lot of space for us to do damage.”

Considering Flores arrived in Hertfordshire in June he deserves enormous credit for not only blending assorted new signings into a real team but being willing to compromise his purist inclinations and allowing Watford to indulge in a sometimes direct approach that makes the very most of their speed and athleticism – not to mention Ighalo and Deeney.

With Papiss Cissé painfully out of sorts, McClaren would probably give an awful lot for an Ighalo. Not that he is entirely downcast. “There’s enough in our dressing room,” he said. “I’ve seen enough attitude and spirit not to panic and to stay calm. There’s no crisis. We can turn it round.” His ultimate solution promises to be intriguing.

Man of the match Odion Ighalo (Watford)