• Club board looking for significant improvement after thrashing at Chelsea • Poor results against Stoke City and Bournemouth could seal manager’s fate

Steve McClaren knows he is running out of time to reassure Mike Ashley, Newcastle United’s owner, he is the right man to save the club from relegation. The 5-1 defeat at Chelsea meant Newcastle dropped back into the bottom three and the board are looking for a significant improvement in the next two games, at Stoke City on Wednesday 2 March and at home to Bournemouth three days later.

Lee Charnley, Newcastle’s managing director, is a supporter of McClaren and continues to believe the former England coach can turn things round. Nonetheless, the cost of relegation from the Premier League dictates the club’s patience is finite.

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The hope is the week-long warm weather training camp in Spain will prove a turning point in McClaren’s troubled tenure. Out of the FA Cup, they will spend fifth-round Saturday playing a friendly against the Norwegian side Lillestrom in La Manga.

With Manchester City’s involvement in the Capital One Cup final on Sunday week necessitating the postponement of their trip to St James’ Park, Newcastle are not in competitive action again until that potentially pivotal trip to Stoke. By then a manager well aware Rafael Benítez, Brendan Rodgers and David Moyes are out of work will hope a lengthy injury list has begun clearing up and he will have successfully addressed the team’s tactical and psychological frailties.

Despite spending £30m on the midfielders Jonjo Shelvey, Andros Townsend and Henri Saivet in January, Newcastle failed to remedy their defensive shortcomings. McClaren, who was forced to field Rolando Aarons, an inexperienced winger, at left-back against Chelsea, can argue he has been sold short by a board whose £80m spend on new players this season followed a lengthy period of minimal investment in the squad.

Newcastle have been in decline for some time and, under John Carver, were fortunate to escape relegation last spring. McClaren’s appointment was supposed to bring change. Instead, they are 18th, with a particularly appalling away record.