Things aren't going particularly well for Newcastle United at the moment. 

Two miserable losses in a row have yielded only three shots on target and, as Daniel Storey recently pointed out, the Magpies are bottom of most attacking metrics when looking at the Premier League as a whole.

They average just 2.3 shots on target per league fixture (WhoScored) and The Athletic revealed they are the worst at carrying the ball forward, so it's fair to say they are struggling to impose themselves under Steve Bruce.

A man under fire pretty much since the day he walked in to St. James' Park, plenty of supporters on social media aren't happy with Bruce. With no fans in the stadium, that does appear to be the platform from which to vent frustration. 

However, according to Dean Jones on the Touchline Talk podcast, those behind the scenes are. 

'The people running the club right now are sticking with him,' he said to Peter O'Rourke from the thirteenth minute and ten seconds onwards.' 

'I think they do have some sympathy for the situation he's been managing in'. 

That certainly does mirror reports from The Telegraph over the weekend but it is interesting to hear that decision-makers on Tyneside are sympathetic to his situation.

While this is, of course, a strange season and unchartered ground for Premier League clubs, everyone is in the same boat. 

Perhaps the only thing to be sympathetic about is the fact Bruce couldn't shift some of the deadwood at the club in order to further strengthen. Speaking to the Shields Gazette at the back end of the window, he said as much in that he needed to get a few players off the wage bill. 

Ultimately, he proved unable (something we saw across Europe with even major clubs such as Juventus and Barcelona paying off the likes of Gonzalo Higuain and Luis Suarez) and was therefore unable to add to his arrivals. 

With many signed well before his time and thought to be costing the club £5m annually, that is the only reasonable thing Bruce couldn't have really controlled. Takeover talk may not have helped but he was still backed in the summer with the £20m signing of Callum Wilson. 

The statistics do not lie. This is a team who seriously struggle to create much going forward and they've also conceded the highest number of shots per game on average (16.2). 

Grim reading for Newcastle fans and, with Bruce seemingly backed, there looks to be more grim watching on the way too.