John Carver has publicly declared his interest in the Newcastle job for the first time.

Carver, speaking after the Magpies’ 1-0 defeat at Leicester in the FA Cup third round, has been in caretaker charge of first-team affairs for the past two matches, while Alan Pardew’s move away to Crystal Palace has been engineered.

That was officially finalized on Saturday morning but Carver felt unable to go public until the matter was sorted, despite telling the Newcastle players his plan to ‘throw his hat into the ring’.

Carver, who believes the St James’ Park job will be that of a head coach rather than a manager, said: “Alan has gone now, it’s been announced.

“At the time when all that is going on it’s difficult to say how you feel, but obviously deep down inside I want to be head coach of this football club.

“I am going to throw my hat into the ring. I did tell the players but I couldn’t make it public – now I am.

“I have got to be honest. I haven’t spoken with (owner) Mike (Ashley), but there’s no need for me to speak with Mike or be in touch. The role is of head coach, not manager. The job of a head coach is to prepare the players and the team for the next match, which is what I’ve been doing.”

On the pitch, Leonardo Ulloa’s first-half header was the difference between two much-changed teams.

The Argentinian’s goal was a rare moment of brilliance in a game low on quality, despite the tie being the only one played on Saturday between two Barclays Premier League teams.

Perhaps the lack of quality could be explained by the 14 changes in total – seven each – made by the two managers.

Newcastle created little during the game and the majority of the 4,319 Geordies who had made the journey turned on their team late on and chanted for owner Mike Ashley to ‘get out of our club’.

They had seen their team lose for the fourth away match in a row and even booed the players, together with Carver, at the end as they came over to applaud the fans.

Carver said: “The fans pay their money and they are entitled to do that and react that way.

“It’s hugely embarrassing but they are entitled to do that. One thing I was going to make sure I do was make sure the players did go over. I wasn’t going to shirk that responsibility and I wanted to make sure the players didn’t either.”

For Leicester, it was a first home win since the 5-3 victory against Manchester United on September 21.

It extended the Foxes’ unbeaten run to three matches in all competitions, coming on the back of 10 defeats in the last 11 Premier League games, and manager Nigel Pearson was pleased to see his side maintain their momentum.

He said: “On the back of two decent results in the league, it was important for us to carry that on. The Premier League is the priority but when you get a couple of decent results, on the back of the run we were coming off, it was important to get the result rather than the performance.

“We both had to utilize our squads, which made fluency difficult and perhaps didn’t make for a great spectacle. But it gave some players pitch time, a chance to perform, which is going to be important for us going forward into the rest of January and into February and March.

“Ultimately for us the next two or three months is about picking up enough wins, not about performances.”

On the turmoil at his former club, Pearson, caretaker boss at Newcastle in 2007 and 2008, added: “Expectations up there are huge and the potential is huge. But sometimes it’s not easy to make progress when expectations are what they are.

“I don’t know what goes on at boardroom level but I know John Carver and Newcastle is his club, if you like, and he has the club’s best interests at heart.”