Newcastle United manager Eddie Howe said his side were not where they “needed to be mentally” during the 3-1 defeat to West Ham on Sunday.
Despite an early opener from Jacob Murphy, Newcastle fell away at the London Stadium, ending the first half 2-1 thanks to a Lucas Paqueta strike and a Sven Botman own goal.
Things didn’t get much better in the second half for Howe’s side as they struggled to create anything of note going forward and were eventually saddled with another league defeat at the hands of Tomas Soucek, who finished off the game for the hosts late on.
“I don’t think it looks like the Newcastle team we’ve seen in recent seasons,” Howe said in a press conference.
“I think the body language, the team spirit on the pitch and a lot of the little things that contribute to our performance were not there.
“I don’t think it was tactical, I don’t think it was necessarily technical. It was a byproduct of us not being where we needed to be mentally. We did a lot of work with the players between the last game and this moment.”
“So, it’s a difficult thing to work on now, but we’ll go away and try to learn from today. I think this is a turning point that we can use to our advantage.”
In an attempt to try and inject some energy into his side, Howe opted for a three-way change at half-time, bringing on striker Nick Voltimade, Anthony Gordon and Fabian Schar, changes that ultimately failed to make any impact.
“That was frustrating in the first half,” Howe said. “I could have taken almost anyone out and I think that was a reflection of the situation we were in at that moment in the game and it’s very rare for me to feel that way.”
“Actually, I don’t think I’ve done that since I was Newcastle coach. So I felt the team needed a bit of a change in the first half. That’s why I did what I did.”
The defeat in east London was Newcastle’s eighth Premier League away game in a row without a win, and Howe believes Sunday’s performance was their worst.
He added: “We lacked physicality and energy in our performance, and it was difficult to benefit from that, as we rotated the team a lot in midweek in order to freshen up the players.”
“So that doesn’t seem to be there. So yeah, that was very disappointing for us. That was a bad performance. We tried to be very open and honest about how we played and yeah, we weren’t ourselves today.”
“I mean obviously the numbers aren’t good in terms of our away form recently. We haven’t gotten the points we have at home. But I think some performances have been very good. We haven’t converted those really good performances into wins.
“Today was a bit of a decline in terms of performance and this is the worst we have played during that series of matches in which we did not win.”
“And I certainly think the reflection period is important for us.”
