Allan Saint-Maximin delivers ‘good’ verdict on his Newcastle United performance v West Ham

Saint-Maximin came into the side following Bruno Guimaraes’ red card suspension and was deployed on the left-wing ahead of new £40million signing Anthony Gordon. And after a brilliant start to the match which saw Newcastle take an early lead through Callum Wilson, West Ham equalised as Lucas Paqueta poked the ball home following a corner.

Saint-Maximin played just shy of 70 minutes before being replaced by Gordon, but the French winger admitted it felt good to be back out starting a Premier League match for The Magpies, despite the result.

“Yeah it was very good,” he admitted. "The team have won many games and it was important for us to try and win this game as well but I think there was a lot of frustration because we tried to do everything to win the game.

"It's important to keep that [unbeaten] run because we haven't lost a game in a long time. For sure, every time we play in front of our fans we want to win but it's not easy.”

West Ham boss David Moyes described the draw as a ‘great point’ for his side, but Saint-Maximin couldn’t say the same for Newcastle.

"It's not a good point for us but as the manager says, when you can't win, don't lose and that's what we did,” he told The Gazette.

"You can see all the teams now come here to try to draw and will slow down the game. We saw that against Leeds and many different teams.

“It's something we can understand because we've been in that position before. That's why we can understand but we have big players and we are a big team so we have to find ways to win.”

Although Saint-Maximin admitted Newcastle’s offensive output was not at the desired level on Saturday, he was content with his own performance.

“It was a good comeback because I thought I created some good chances and I tried to defend a lot and help Dan Burn,” Saint-Maximin added. “We didn't concede, only from a set-piece so the most important thing is to do what the coach wants from me and I know I did well doing that.

“The important thing is we didn't lose so I will do my best to help the team in the next game and get the win against Bournemouth.”

While Saint-Maximin has only played a bit-part role in Newcastle's impressive season so far, he was keen to stress that he hasn’t lost any of the 18 matches he's featured in this season.

"When I look back, I haven't lost any games,” Saint-Maximin continued. “I have never put the team in a difficult situation and the coach knows that. It's the most important thing for me and even [against West Ham] we didn't lose, it wasn't the best offensive performance from the players because we know what we're capable to do.

"Defensively, I don't even know if they got one shot [from open play] so it was another good performance for us, we just need to find a way to work against these types of teams. We will need to find a way to score against these teams.”