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Newcastle’s inability to add numbers to their squad in the summer is already proving to be a major mistake.

For Saturday’s home game against Fulham they did not have one defender (apart from goalkeeper Harper) on the bench. How can that be?

We currently have six back four defenders in Carr, Taylor, Moore, Bramble, Ramage and Babayaro with Olivier Bernard being a seventh once he is match fit. Taylor was injured playing for England under 21’s in mid-week and Barbarayaro failed a fitness test.

This is one reason the Newcastle faithful were aghast that we could not add to our numbers over the summer.

While Newcastle seemed to cruise through this game for the first 80 minutes, those individual errors again reared their ugly head, and we managed to create a home defeat out of the jaws of victory by conceding two poor goals in the last eight minutes.

For the second time in 3 seasons Fulham were victorious at St. James Park. Remember Fulham is a mediocre team. woeful away from home. The picked up just 5 points from their last 60 in away games in the league before Saturday’s game.

Results like this can very quickly doom Newcastle’s season - because we do not have enough selection at the back to bring in other players. So unless Roeder can work another miracle and get Bramble and the others to concentrate for 90 minutes - we may lose too many points by January to be able to qualify for Europe next year.

When you remember that Newcastle will be playing at least two games a week until the end of the year you have to wonder what Roeder and Shepherd were thinking in not addiing to the squad in the summer - and class players were available.

Ivan Helguera, of Real Madrid is a great player and still only 31 and almost joined Bolton on August 31st; Jaun Pablo Sorin, the Argentina captain and full back was available and is still only 30. Here are two players that could have immensley improved Newcastle’s defense for not much more than $3M for the pair. I will not even mention the half-hearted attempts to bring Woodgate and Huth to the club.

While we have some very good youngsters that could make their mark in Phil Cave, Paul Huntington and Kris Gate - they each have only one senior appearance to their names in the friendly at Norwich in pre-season - so it would be asking a lot for these players to fill the void.

If we are to remain competitive through Chistmas then Glenn Roeder and the coaching staff have their work cut out for them. But it could (and should) have been so different if the job had been done in the summer.