Eddie Howe said he was pleased with his side’s performance in Newcastle United’s 2-0 defeat to West Ham United at St James’ Park.
The Magpies head coach believed that Newcastle were the better team in the first half and said the final score would have been different had they converted one of their chances in that period.
“We were the dominant team at half-time and the game would have been very different if we had equalised before the first half,” Howe said to Sky Sports after the match.
“I’m pretty pleased with the first 60 minutes albeit we’re losing the game 2-0. We opened them up and had chances to score. Up to that point I was pretty pleased but the last 30 minutes I didn’t enjoy.
“We tried a bit too hard to score. We’ll rue that when we watch the game back.
“I don’t think anything takes me by surprise in the Premier League, we know every team has qualities.”
Ruing individual errors
Despite the positives, Howe was left to rue the individual errors from his players in defence as Newcastle missed the chance to move into the top six, with his side now in 10th place.
“We got our organisation slightly wrong and made a couple of individual errors. If you leave a player like Tomas Soucek’s aerial ability unmarked, you are going to pay the price. It’s something we have to learn from.
“At the end we had players out of position, so I didn’t like the way we looked at the end. But up until that 60 minute mark I thought we were the dominant team.”
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