Graham Potter did not feel his West Ham United team did enough to beat Newcastle United on Monday evening.
But, at the same time, he felt Maximilian Kilman was fouled by Alexander Isak as Harvey Barnes’ cross floated over his head and was converted by Bruno Guimarães for the only goal of a tight game at London Stadium.
And so it was that the Magpies flew back to the North East with a 1-0 victory, and the Hammers were left to rue a decision or two that went against them, and a failure to turn repeated forays into the final third into clear chances and, ultimately, goals.
Moments after Guimarães’s 63rd-minute strike, Jarrod Bowen went down under a challenge from the Brazilian inside the Newcastle penalty area, but referee Michael Salisbury again waved away the home appeals, and VAR Alex Chilowicz agreed with the initial call.
Earlier, Tomáš Souček had fired over inside 60 seconds of kick-off and both Bowen and Mohammed Kudus had shot straight at Nick Pope as the Irons started brightly, but the EFL Cup finalists resisted everything the home side could create and secured a narrow win.
Speaking to West Ham TV, Potter felt his team had worked hard and been hard done by, by the decisions that went in Newcastle’s favour and played their part in the Londoners going home empty-handed.
On a more positive note, the Head Coach was happy to see Michail Antonio back at London Stadium, three months after he suffered serious injuries in a car crash.
I thought it was a really committed performance from the players, they gave everything, which is good to see.
We're disappointed to lose, of course we are, because we had ambition to win. I thought we started the game well, had a couple of opportunities, they came into it and drove us back more than we'd like.
We struggled to really impose ourselves on the game for periods but then we showed character to stick in it and we had our moments again and it ebbed and flowed a little bit.
I think the goal was just disappointing because we feel there was a push on Max and obviously the first goal in that type of game is really important.
Overall I think we didn’t do enough to win the game but I feel for the players, as I thought they deserved something from the game.