Newcastle United 1-2 Sunderland: Alan Shearer pulled no punches in his assessment of Sunday’s Tyne-Wear derby defeat.
Alan Shearer slammed Newcastle United’s 2-1 derby defeat to Sunderland at St James’ Park on Sunday as ‘weak’ and ‘pathetic’ - and it’s hard to disagree.
Newcastle took an early lead through Anthony Gordon inside the opening 10 minutes, one they took into half-time. But another second half collapse for the Magpies saw Chemsdine Talbi and Brian Brobbey win it for the visitors in the second half.
Brobbey found the net in the 90th minute as Sunderland completed a their first Premier League double of the season over their fierce local rivals.
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Eddie Howe on Newcastle United’s 2-1 defeat to Sunderland
Reflecting on the defeat, Eddie Howe said: “The lads know the size of the game, they know what's at stake, so they're trying their best. I can assure everybody of that, but we haven't got certain things right in those goals. I think there were two really poor goals to concede, both in the last actions and the bits before.
“And that's not been a one-off for us. We've defended poorly for that period of time, certainly since the turn of the year, and we're well aware of that.
“So, yeah, all we can do, as I said earlier, is return for the first time to the training pitch to try and rectify some of the errors.”
Alan Shearer hits out at ‘pathetic’ Newcastle United after Sunderland defeat
At full-time, Shearer could not hide his frustration as he took to social media to slam the Magpies’ second-half display. Talbi equalised near the hour mark before Brobbey netted just before seven minutes of stoppage time went up.
Shearer wrote: “A pathetic, weak, lazy, limp second half from Newcastle again #NEWSUN.”
The Magpies have now dropped 22 points from winning positions, leaving their 12th in the Premier League with seven matches left to play.
“That's an incredible amount of points,” said Howe. “There's huge regret from us on that. Certainly, from my side, there's no part of me that ever wants to take the lead and then to sit on a lead. The opposite. We want to go for more goals. That's always been in our psychology as coaching, to continue to attack and continue to be front foot.
“But we haven't been able to maintain that for whatever reason. We've become very passive and quite reactive, and we were again today, and it's a huge disappointment. We've got quite a few to go through. We'll go through as many as we can.”
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