Eddie Howe has said he would offer Newcastle his resignation if he believed he was no longer the right man to lead the club.

Howe’s team visit Tottenham on Tuesday night aiming to end the run of three successive Premier League defeats that has prompted their slide to 12th place. Victory would be their first in an away match since December but the 48-year-old manager remains confident he can navigate his fatigued side out of their slump.

“I think the key question I always have to ask myself is: ‘Am I the right person to take the team and the club forward?’ There’s no doubt in my mind [that I’m the right man],” said Howe, whose players have sometimes failed to cope with a relentless fixture list prompted, partly, by their ongoing involvement in the ­Champions League. “If there was [doubt] I wouldn’t be [here] because the club’s the most important thing. I’d never put myself before the club.”

Howe appears cautiously optimistic that arguably the most testing period of his near four and a half years in charge at St James’ Park will prove a temporary phase.

“If I didn’t think I was the correct man to take the team forward and could give the players what they need, then I would step aside and let someone else do it,” he said. “The momentum is against us at the moment. We have to swing it back – the world can look a very different place within a couple of games.”

Although the manager is understood to retain the full support of the Saudi Arabian-owned club’s UK‑based hierarchy, some ­Newcastle supporters are becoming noisily disgruntled as they deconstruct the team’s tactical approach.

Howe’s preferred high-intensity, hard-pressing, often counterattacking style – or “going for opponents’ throats”, as he puts it – has real ­merit but he acknowledges there are ­serious questions to be answered about his players’ frequently poor ball retention. Not for nothing have the Brentford manager, Keith Andrews, and his Leeds counterpart, Daniel Farke, described recent games at Newcastle as “chaotic”.

“There are challenges for us in possession,” said Howe, whose players look increasingly exhausted. “I think we need to be better with the ball. I think that was evident on Saturday [during the 3-2 home defeat by Brentford]. The control aspect of our game was poor. It was a very transitional game.

“In some senses though, history tells us that we’re really good at the transition games. In the Leeds game [won 4-3 at St James’ Park in ­January] being transitional helped us win. The fact that it was end to end and it was open meant our attacking players could take advantage. But against Liverpool and Manchester City in recent games, the transition aspect didn’t help us. So it’s something we need to look at.”

Some observers wonder whether Newcastle’s assiduous manager has become so obsessed with an endless stream of statistics and data that he is losing sight of the bigger, creative, picture and perhaps ­prompting ­players of the calibre of his Italy midfielder Sandro Tonali to consider alternative options. “I don’t think performances have been particularly bad,” Howe said, perhaps tellingly. “Statistically we’re strong in games but the results haven’t matched.”

If many of Howe’s problems centre on a raft of recent injuries to key personnel including Tino Livramento, Joelinton and Fabian Schär, uncertainty in the centre-forward position is also a factor. In the past three games Anthony Gordon, Nick Woltemade, Yoane Wissa and Will Osula have taken turns in the role. None have convinced.

Although Woltemade and Wissa cost more than £120m combined, they have not yet proved adequate successors to Alexander Isak, whose acrimonious £125m departure for Liverpool last summer arguably prompted some panic buying.

Woltemade is gifted but is much more a No 10 than a 9, Wissa looks rusty after a knee injury, Gordon is a winger and Osula inexperienced and highly erratic. Howe has been reluctant to pair Woltemade and Wissa but there seems a case for altering his hallmark 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1 with Woltemade at No 10.

“We have new players we’re trying to bed into the team format,” he said. “I’ve got to be honest, it’s not quite functioned fully yet.”

For the moment at least, he remains confident of finding a solution. He described his task as being to give value and help the players. “So, as long as I feel that in my heart and in my spirit, then my desire and my motivation levels are as high as they’ve ever been.”

That resolve could be tested in the coming days and weeks. After the Tottenham game, a Newcastle side without a win in five Premier League matches travel to Aston Villa for an FA Cup fourth-round tie on Saturday.

Then comes a draining midweek trip to Baku to face Qarabag of Azerbaijan in a Champions League playoff followed by a Saturday league engagement at title-chasing Manchester City.

“We have to defend better,” said Howe. “And be more clinical at the other end.”