DeAndre Yedlin lifts lid on dressing room inquest into Newcastle's defeat to West Brom

Rafa Benitez’s side were beaten 1-0 by the Premier League’s basement club on Saturday.

Matt Phillips scored the only goal of the game at St James’s Park.

The defeat followed a loss by the same scoreline to Everton five days earlier.

Newcastle struggled to create chances against Darren Moore’s well-organised side, who had beaten Manchester United on their previous away outing.

And Benitez admitted after the match that “everything was wrong from the first minute.”

United’s players held a dressing room inquest into the defeat, which has left the club 10th in the table with three games left to play.

“We were all talking after the game and said it wasn’t good enough out there,” said Yedlin.

“If the quality’s not there, the least you can do is show the fight. And we didn’t do that.

“It was disappointing, we needed to show more fight and we didn’t show it.

“We didn’t create enough, that’s the name of the game. They countered too many times, and we fell asleep defensively. It was really disappointing.”

Newcastle secured their top-flight status after winning four successive games.

Asked if the team’s mentality had changed, Yedlin said: “We would be lying to say there is nothing like that contributing to it, but that’s not the mentality we want to have.

“It is something we need to fix. These last games we have to take that attitude into them and give our all.

“We need to show or same fight we did when we tried to get that 40-point mark.”

United are three points behind ninth-placed Leicester City, beaten 5-0 by Crystal Palace.

“It’s important we finish on a high,” said Yedlin.

“We went through a tricky patch before Christmas where we didn’t play very well, and there was some negativity around us, but we stayed positive in the camp.

“Obviously, we’re going through a little dip at the moment, and we need to stay positive.

“We need to start picking up results again. Hopefully, we can finish the season strongly.

“If you look at where we are in the table, then it’s been a positive season. We’ve exceeded a lot of people’s expectations.

“We can look back and think of the things we could have done better, and had we done those we could have been even higher in the table.

“It’s one of those things where we can look at it and be satisfied with what we have done while also knowing that we could be even better if we improve in certain areas.”

Meanwhile, West Brom caretaker manager hailed his team’s result.

“I’m really, really proud to get a result like that,” said Moore. “Whether it was Newcastle’s doing, we knew as a squad we were stepping into a very difficult arena against a very good team and a team that would ask a lot of questions of us.

“First half, I thought we could have been more than one goal up.

“We had some chances to capitalise on and could have gone on in at half time with a healthier lead.

“Apart from Ben Foster pulling off that wonderful save, a world-class save (from Dwight Gayle), I thought we could have been a couple of goals up.”