HARVEY BARNES is hoping his match-winning heroics against West Ham will spark a sustained turnaround in his fortunes with Newcastle United.

Barnes was one of the Magpies’ flagship summer signings, making a £39m move from Leicester City, but his first season on Tyneside has hardly gone to plan with a succession of injury issues restricting him to just three Premier League starts.

He wasn’t in the starting side at the weekend either, but he could hardly have made a more dramatic intervention after leaving the bench in the 67th minute, slotting home a clinical equaliser before drilling home the last-minute winner that secured a remarkable 4-3 win.

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He is likely to find himself in the starting line-up when Everton visit Tyneside on Tuesday, with Anthony Gordon suspended, and is hoping Saturday’s dramatic double will enable him to draw a line under the troubled start to his Newcastle career.

“It’s been a tough season for me,” admitted Barnes. “Playing time has been limited through injury, so when I’m out there, I just want to do everything I can to help the team get points.

“Those goals and those moments, you can’t really describe them. It’s what I’ve missed so much whilst being injured, but hopefully there’s many more of them to come this year. I’ll cherish that moment.”

Newcastle’s comeback success, which was the first time they had come from behind to claim victory all season, lifted them to within a point of seventh-placed West Ham and significantly enhanced the prospects of securing European qualification.

Another win over relegation-threatened Everton would improve things further, and while the injury problems continue to mount with Jamaal Lascelles, Tino Livramento and Miguel Almiron all having suffered setbacks on Saturday, Barnes is hoping the manner of Newcastle’s weekend win will ensure confidence levels are high on Tuesday night.

“It was a team that are close to us in the table (West Ham), and a team that we’re chasing, so it was definitely a big result in that respect,” he said, in an interview with NUFC TV. “We looked after the international break as a little reset, with ten games left, and it’s all about making that final push now and getting ourselves as high up that table as we can.

“This was the perfect start for that, and hopefully now in the weeks to come, we can keep getting those results and keep climbing the table.”