Eddie Howe launches instant dressing room inquest after Newcastle United defeat at West Ham
West Ham United 3-1 Newcastle United: Jacob Murphy’s early goal was cancelled out by Lucas Paqueta, a Sven Botman own goal and Tomas Soucek.
Newcastle United’s three-game winning streak was brought to an end in disappointing fashion as they lost 3-1 at West Ham United on Sunday afternoon.
Jacob Murphy opened the scoring inside the opening five minutes before a Lucas Paqueta strike and a Sven Botman own goal saw West Ham lead 2-1 at the break. Newcastle pushed for an equaliser in the second half before The Hammers wrapped up the points in stoppage time with a goal from substitute Tomas Soucek.
It was West Ham’s first home win in the Premier League since February, as Newcastle’s wait for a Premier League away win this season continues.
The Magpies had won against Benfica in the Champions League, Fulham in the Premier League and Tottenham Hotspur in the Carabao Cup heading into the game. But the inconsistent league form from Eddie Howe’s side was on full display as they fell to another away defeat.
The result leaves The Magpies sitting 13th in the table with 12 points and 10 goals in their opening 10 games.
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Eddie Howe reacts to NUFC loss
Howe admitted Newcastle’s performance was ‘the worst’ of the season so far but couldn’t quite put his finger on the reason why after an impressive display against Spurs on Wednesday night.
“I think the dynamism [of the side], easy for me to say, wasn't there,” Howe said. “Just the physicality, the energy was missing in our performance and the difficult thing to sort of take from that as we obviously rotated the team a lot in midweek for freshness in the players, so that didn't seem to be there, so hugely frustrating for us, that was a poor performance, we tried to be very open and honest with how we play and we weren't ourselves.”
When asked if it was a mentality issue from his players, the Newcastle boss added: “I don't, no I don't think so, I mean obviously the numbers aren't good in terms of our away recently so it would be foolish for me to sort of dismiss that outright, I think we've got a very, very good group of professionals who care deeply and want to do well, but certainly we haven't replicated our home form away, we haven't got the points that we've got at home, but I think some of the performances have been very good, we just didn't turn those really good performances into wins.
“This was sort of a dip in terms of performance and that's the worst we've played during that run of games that we haven't won and certainly a period of reflection I think for us is important.”
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Eddie Howe launches dressing room inquest
While Howe looks for answers ahead of Wednesday night’s Champions League match against Athletic Club at St James’ Park, the Newcastle boss admitted some ‘honest’ words were said to the players in the dressing room after the game.
“I'm always very honest with the players,” Howe said. “I believe in honesty, whether that's positive or negative.
“So I was very honest and I always try to be fair. And yeah, now the key thing will be everyone's reaction.