The Newcastle United legend has not held back on his former club's recent struggles

Newcastle United are too easy to play through, have 'no creativity' and their back-to-back defeats to Coventry City and Aston Villa were 'worrying'.

That is the blunt verdict of Magpies legend Alan Shearer, who slammed Newcastle's performance in their 1-0 defeat to Aston Villa, fresh off a 4-1 defeat to Coventry City, as 'terrible'.

The Magpies mustered just one shot on target in their defeat to Villa and Shearer, who was in attendance at St James' Park, left feeling really concerned about the season ahead.

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"I look at their performance against Coventry and it was terrible and I was thinking what response have we got? At home, St James' Park against Villa and it was nothing," Shearer told the Rest Is Football podcast.

"They didn't create [anything]. They had one shot on target and it was Botman and it was in the second half and other than that, no creativity, no one with that killer pass, we were terrible."

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When fellow podcast hosts Gary Lineker and Micah Richards laughed about Shearer talking about Newcastle moving into the Champions League spaces with a win over Coventry just last week, the United legend hit back with an expletive-laden response before suggesting the player who could make a huge difference for Matthias Jaissle's side going forward.

"F--- off, Micah. We were really, really bad," Shearer replied. "I did say it was going to be a yo-yo season and I did have them finishing 13th or 14th and I still think that will be the case.

"There was just no response from that really poor performance at Coventry. I was expecting a lot more. It was really weak, tepid, and there was nothing to that performance that you can come away and think 'we were all right there'. We were terrible.

"I said to you that we didn't create anything which was worrying but the way teams can play through Newcastle, because if you beat that press with a front six, there are such huge holes in the middle.

"It was concerning, definitely. Those two performances would really worry me. There was a lack of everything, they don't look solid and I was missing that killer pass.

"I said to you about the youngster Sean Steur, who could play that killer pass. He chose not to bring him on and it was a worrying performance on Saturday."

Newcastle will look to get back to winning ways when they make the trip to face Crystal Palace on Sunday, with the Eagles having struggles of their own after a brutal 5-0 defeat to their fierce rivals Brighton and Hove Albion.