SAM Allardyce admitted he is a worried man as he reflected on the worst sequence of results in his four-and-a-half year Reebok reign.

Wanderers remain seven points clear of the Premiership drop zone with just nine games to play but they have taken just two points from their last six league games and go into Sunday's Reebok clash with Champions League-chasing Newcastle desperately in need of a result that will stop the slide and ease their relegation fears.

So desperate, in fact, that Allardyce and his players would be happy with just a point.

"I'm very disappointed and very worried," Allardyce admitted after Wanderers' 2-1 defeat at Arsenal left him to reflect on a losing sequence that is threatening to turn a promising season into a nail-biting nightmare.

"Four league defeats on the trot is a bit of a crisis point for us. People are saying we are safe but we are still anything but safe."

While Arsenal celebrated matching the records of Leeds and Liverpool with a 29-game unbeaten start to a top flight season, Wanderers equalled an unwanted club record of four successive Premiership defeats, dating back to the disastrous 1995-96 campaign when they finished bottom of the pile.

And although Jay-Jay Okocha drew encouragement from successive performances, including a storming first-half at home to Chelsea and a gallant but ultimately fruitless fightback at Arsenal,to take a positive stance, there was evidence that not everyone in the Reebok dressing room shares the captain's confidence.

"We are in a bit of a crisis," seasoned campaigner Simon Charlton conceded.

"We've never ever had a run like this since we've been in the Premier League and that's something we really have to address.

"It doesn't matter what it takes, we've got to get off that 34-points mark... I'll take a boring 0-0 against Newcastle because, above all else, we've got to stop these conceding goals."

Wanderers, who shot to eighth in the table and flirted with the prospect of qualifying for Europe themselves on the back of a sequence of solid defensive performances in November, have managed just one clean sheet in their last 18 league and cup games and are desperately in need of a stabilising performance if they are to avoid a nervous end to the season.

Allardyce is concerned that his strikers are spurning good scoring chances but his defence is his major concern and to that end he is hoping an extra day on the training ground will give him the time he needs to get Wanderers "back to basics" to stem the tide of torment that is threatening to undo all the good work they did earlier in the season.

"This group of games: Chelsea, Arsenal and Newcastle, was always going to be difficult but never beyond us; they haven't been in the past and they shouldn't have been now."