Newcastle vs Manchester United LIVE: Premier League result, final score and reaction tonight

I know he’s had a huge influence on some Premier League managers who are currently active and successful in the league, and he’s one of the culture change managers, really, who has brought in a lot of new ideas that a lot of people have followed," he said.

"He’s a definite pioneer of the game. He’s someone I’ve had a couple of conversations with over the years, and someone I highly respect and admire.

"I think with anyone who has his reputation in the game and some of the things that he’s achieved at different clubs, it shows that his methodology works wherever he goes, so I’ve got no doubt he will make very instant changes to Manchester United.

"He’ll bring in his own way of playing – I’ve already seen that in the two games they’ve had – and they’ve started to mirror him and his personality, so we expect a very tough game. I’ve got a lot of respect for Ralf and his work."

We resumed for training last Tuesday and on Thursday had almost the whole team apart from Paul Pogba in training. Unfortunately, Victor Lindelof tested positive with Covid yesterday so he cannot play. But Raphael Varane is available again and is in the starting line-up. In the last three or four days we had some good training sessions.

“He [Mason Greenwood] is definitely playing up front, but in what position you will see. He deserves to play. He did extremely well in the last two or three weeks in training and when he came on against Young Boys.

“It was about decision making against Norwich. In some parts of the game we did not take the right decisions and I did not like the body language in some parts. This was a topic in preparation for this game, an away game in front of 65,000. We need to take the next step and be aggressive and prepared for a difficulty, intense game.

“We had two clean sheets in the last two games and so no need for me to change anything I do not have to. It is about taking steps and development. With our team, we are always able to score goals so it is about having a clean sheet and playing defensively with all the players. It starts up front with the strikers.”

There’s a lot of memories that spring to mind of those games – Newcastle tended, at that period of time, to have memorable games against most teams, to be honest. I think there are stand-out moments you think back to, and I can picture some of the goals and the scenes in my mind.

“It’s up to us to try and recreate those times – the attacking verve, the swagger that that team had, the flair the individual players possessed, but then the team took that identity over and it’s certainly something we’re desperate to do.

“But we’re going to need a little bit of time to see that in full creation. At the moment, we’re still progressing, and we have to obviously get the defensive side of our game right before we transition into the team we all want to be.”