Howe had long since seen enough by the time Botman turned Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s cross into his own net just before the interval.<\/p>\n
The Newcastle head coach hauled off Emil Krafth, Nick Woltemade and Gordon at half-time, but he could have used all of his five permitted changes there and then.<\/p>\n
“I almost could have taken anyone off,” he said. “That was a reflection of where we were in that moment in the game and it’s very rare for me to feel that way. I don’t think I have since I’ve been manager of Newcastle. <\/p>\n
“I felt the team needed some shaking up at half-time. That’s why I did what I did.”<\/p>\n
Yet it did not have the desired effect. Newcastle are now winless in their past eight away league games.<\/p>\n
Newcastle have travelled to some testing grounds in that time, but Howe’s side have now failed to beat Aston Villa (twice), Brighton (twice), Bournemouth, Arsenal, Leeds United and West Ham.<\/p>\n
For context, only Fulham, Nottingham Forest and Wolves have picked up fewer points than Newcastle (three) on the road this season.<\/p>\n
No wonder Howe shared some “honest” words with his players after the game.<\/p>\n
But the head coach was wary of overeacting, instead hoping this particular loss finally proves a turning point on the road.<\/p>\n
A similar defeat in London certainly did nearly a year ago when Newcastle were thumped by Brentford.<\/p>\n
It was a result which left Newcastle languishing in the lower half of the table, where they again find themselves now.<\/p>\n
Newcastle went on to win seven games in a row in all competitions, including impressive away victories against Arsenal, Tottenham and Manchester United.<\/p>\n
And they will certainly need to summon that spirit once more when they return to the Gtech Community Stadium next week.<\/p>\n
“People say look in the mirror but we just go home and reflect,” goalscorer Murphy said on Sky Sports. “This is a moment where you really do need to stay calm. <\/p>\n
“Let’s not be too reactive. We know we have to put things right.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Howe had long since seen enough by the time Botman turned Aaron Wan-Bissaka’s cross into his own net…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":258374,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":{"0":"post-258373","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258373","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=258373"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/258373\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/258374"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=258373"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=258373"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=258373"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}