Enrique's passion not good enough for Toon

Newcastle United are prepared to overlook Jose Enrique's passion for the club by putting him up for sale at the end of the season. The club made a quite public attempt to sell the player during the January transfer window - a possible swap deal for Celtic skipper Stephen McManus, but with Enrique performing better than before in the Magpies' last two fixtures, a change in policy was expected, but it has now emerged that nothing has changed.

However, Enrique is a fighter, and the former Villareal man spoke of his love for his present club, and the city in a desperate attempt to salvage his Toon career.

Speaking to The Sunday Sun he said:

"I`m happy living here, I`m happy being at Newcastle, because it`s a very good club and a great city, and I`m happy because I am playing right now,"

"But I`m not happy because we`ve only won one of our last six games, and because of the position we are in the league. Nobody here can be totally happy in this situation."

"I know I can play better than I have," "It`s been difficult to play here. Not in England, but in this team, because when you play bad and your team is down, life is hard."

"You have seen the games. In some of them, all we do is defend, defend. That is the situation we are in."

"In Spain, my game was to attack. You play with Manchester United, Arsenal . . . they are never defending in the game. All the time it is 'attack, attack`. But in our situation, it`s more difficult." "When I was at Villarreal, I played very well because the team was playing very well. It`s all about the 11 players playing well."

"They became one of the top teams in Spain, and my characteristic there was to attack all the time. But here, I can`t. It`s very different."

"The problems for Newcastle have probably made me a better player," Enrique adds. "I always felt I defended well, but now I defend better, because I practise it every day."

"The only problem here is our position in the league. Nobody wants this club to go into the Second Division." "I think we have very good players, so it is hard to understand how we`re in this position. You see training and we have good players. It can only be the injuries.

"Too often we have 10 or 12 people out and reserve team players have to come into the first team because we don`t have enough players.

"The most frustrating thing is that so many of our strikers are out with injuries. It`s frustrating for the team, but this is our only problem I think."

For the very latest Premier League odds

Click here to join in the debate on the club forum.