Andy Carroll: 'We should hang our heads in shame'

Steve Bruce’s side suffered an embarrassing 5-0 defeat to Leicester City yesterday.

Newcastle were already trailing by three goals by the time Carroll came off the bench.

And the striker, re-signed by United as a free agent in the summer, didn’t pull any punches in his post-match assessment of the defeat.

“It was terrible,” said Carroll. “The second half was abysmal. The first half, we did all right. Second half we didn’t come out at all. When the second goal went in, our heads went down and we gave up, basically.

“You saw all the heads went down, and they were sloppy goals. They were all mistakes. It’s not good enough for us.”

Bruce said his words to his players after the game were “unrepeatable”. Asked what Bruce had told the group, Carroll said: “Very strong words.

“He was disappointed, and so he should be. So should we be. We should hang our heads in shame. The whole lot of us. We were terrible. We were not like that in training, so we shouldn’t be like that on a weekend.

“We’ve got a good team. We’ve got strength. We’ve got depth. We’ve got a good manager. We know what we need to do. We just need to show it. First half, we could have been 1-0 up. They got the first goal, and it changed when we had the sending off.”

Newcastle weren’t helped by the red card shown to Isaac Hayden for a lunge at Dennis Praet late in the first half.

“It killed us,” said Carroll. “In that second half it was hard with 10 men, and we never really got going at all.”

Carroll and his team-mates went to applaud United's 2,650-strong away support after the final whistle.

“The fans were unbelievable,” said Carroll. “They never stopped singing. To be honest, they had nothing to sing for. It’s just good to see that, even after the whistle at the end, they were still singing for us.”