Big campaign for Fergie

The talented winger, who enjoyed a spell out on loan at Championship side Birmingham City last year, concedes that another spell away from St James’ Park maybe what is best for him.

“It definitely is a big year for me, as I’m coming to that age now where I just want to play a lot of games and hopefully I can this year,” he insisted.

“Obviously my main objective is to try and get into the Newcastle team, I played a good few games last season up until Christmas before I went out on loan to Birmingham City and I just want to get back to that again and hopefully I can in the coming years. I just have to wait and see when I go back to pre-season in a few weeks time and see what the plans are.

“I think there has been talks already about me maybe going out on loan again, I see a few things in the papers as well about that, it was great to go out on loan last year to just go and play a lot of games for a few months.

“I scored a goal and had a few assists and as I said it was great to just go out and play games and I really enjoyed it my time at Birmingham.”

One of the main reasons why the 21-year-old made the move to St Andrew’s on loan was their manager Lee Clark who Ferguson worked under at Newcastle.

“Because he was my Reserve coach at Newcastle that was one of the main reasons why I decided to sign for Birmingham. I knew what he was all about, he’s a great manager and it worked really well when I went down there.

“If we bring in a couple more players then I wouldn’t mind going out on loan to be honest just to get more game time, it would be great to get a full season under my belt that would be great.

“Going out and having that experience of meeting the new lads at Birmingham and living in a new city was a great experience and the Championship is obviously a tough league and maybe playing two games a week was great for me, great for Newcastle and great for Birmingham.”

It’s back to international action in August when the twice postponed World Cup qualifier with Russia takes place at Windsor Park and the Newcastle United winger is looking forward to the challenge.

“It should be great to play against big teams like Russia, that’s the kind of games you want to play in and I’m really looking forward to it,” he added.

“I think we have only lost a couple of games but we have drawn a lot of games and some games we just don’t know how we didn’t win them. But the lads have been playing brilliantly and now it’s just getting that wee bit of luck that’s all we need.”

The former St Mary’s High School pupil sponsored a new football strip for his old club Eglinton Eagles, also joined in with his former team training session on Saturday morning and played a full part with the youngsters, despite the terrible wet conditions.

“I really enjoyed it and it’s always nice to get a kick about, no matter who it’s against,” he concluded.