JOHN CARVER insists Newcastle United have enough characters in the dressing room to ensure their season doesn’t end with a whimper despite Saturday’s crushing defeat at Manchester City.

The Magpies came close to equalling their heaviest Premier League defeat as goals from Sergio Aguero, Edin Dzeko, Samir Nasri and a brace from David Silva earned Manuel Pellegrini’s side a 5-0 victory at the Etihad Stadium.

The result will do Carver no favours as he tries to put a case forward to guide the club beyond the end of the season and interestingly, leading candidate Remi Garde was in attendance on Saturday.

The former Lyon boss, who has held discussions with the Newcastle hierarchy about taking over at St James’ Park, was working for a French television station as the Tynesiders slumped to their heaviest loss of the campaign.

After conceding a penalty 28 seconds into the game, Newcastle never recovered, but despite City’s superiority they were allowed to play with freedom and ease.

Carver will hold a clear the air meeting with his players this morning in order to draw a line under the game, but despite their efforts coming in for criticism the head coach insists the squad has not given up on their season.

“Our target when we come to places like this is to try and get something from the game. That’s the first thing,” Carver said.

“The second thing is we’ve got 12 games and it’s not about being comfortable where we are, because we’re not.

“We know every point in the Premier League is hard to earn. The season isn’t going to come to a stop. That’s not in my personality and it isn’t for some of the players in that room.

“Your Coloccinis, your Tim Kruls, your Moussa Sissokos and Papiss Cisse coming back from the African Cup of Nations. He’s given us a lift because he’s our top goalscorer.

“We’ll not be thinking that we’re safe and we’ll not be thinking that the season’s over.

“We know the games we have to win and we know what league we are in and next week’s game against Aston Villa at home is huge for us.”

Despite working on a game plan to soak up early pressure from the hosts, Newcastle fell behind with Chris Foy’s whistle barely out of his mouth.

Vurnon Anita took a nasty touch from Mike Williamson’s careless pass allowing Dzeko to nip in and go down in the area from the Dutchman’s foul.

Two more goals followed inside 22 minutes and Carver bemoaned his side’s defending.

He said: “I cannot repeat what I was thinking. It wasn’t a great start.

“There wasn’t anything that we didn’t expect. We expected them to put us under pressure from the kick-off.

“If we had got kick-off we would have done exactly the same, put the ball in their half and put them under pressure but they got it, the ball gets put into our half and we just didn’t deal with it.

“Mike Willliamson had a chance to stick the ball back into their half and he didn’t. He tried to play a little ball into midfield. Vurn turns back on himself and it’s a penalty.

“1-0 away at Manchester you’re in big trouble and then you’ve got an uphill task. It’s very difficult after that.

“It is frustrating, but you can only show the players and talk about what they will do so much. I can’t actually get on the pitch and do anything about it.

“I will take lots of responsibility for what’s happened and the players also have to take it.

“Some of them have taken that responsibility in the changing room.

“We knew we were going to come here and have to defend for long periods, but we didn’t defend well enough. It’s not as if they’ve opened us up with a fantastic goal or a great strike from 30 yards. All the goals were preventable.”