The Magpies began to sink lower down the pitch and "invited pressure" in the 2-1 loss to Crystal Palace
Newcastle United head coach Eddie Howe
Newcastle United head coach Eddie Howe at Crystal Palace(Image: Michael Zemanek/Shutterstock)
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Eddie Howe has told his players to get "back to basics" after sliding to 14th place in the Premier League table.
Howe is in danger of his lowest finish in the top-flight as Newcastle boss and has claimed that his players are suffering from some psychological issues that are affecting their ability to pass the ball and play with confidence. Ahead of the weekend encounter against AFC Bournemouth, Howe has called for character from his squad.
Howe told radio reporters: "I think you have to go back to basics. It is not necessarily a time for too many wild and wonderful new theories.
"It is getting the basics of the game, we have to defend better, we have got to have a great attitude to our work and we have to attack with quality and if you focus on all of those things you come out of it.
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"Certainly, it is a difficult period for us, but that's where you need the group to show real character."
Expanding on his comments about passing the ball, Howe said: "We know that any problem you have in a team can be fixed with good coaching and good attitude from the players, good delivery.
"The things that we are talking about are they go beyond. The ability to pass the ball becomes psychological; that is where we have suffered a little bit. "
One of the most alarming admissions from Howe's post-match Palace comments was the fact that the head coach suggested players had opted to drop back when instructed to find another goal.
He said: "Today (at Palace) we dropped a little bit lower on the pitch with 20 minutes to go and we invited pressure. That was a shift that wasn't planned from us (coaching team) of course.
"But you have to understand the players have been in that situation a lot, and sometimes there is a feeling that you don't want to happen, and then it does.
"From our perspective as coaches, all we can do is return to the basics. We have to defend better. That should have been a clean sheet for us.
"They did not have loads of the ball around the box and the bits we needed to do we didn't do with a lot more clarity and we didn't."
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