Newcastle legend Alan Shearer was thoroughly unimpressed by the Magpies in their ‘awful’ 3-1 defeat to West Ham on Sunday afternoon.
Eddie Howe took his team to east London for a Premier League clash and things started perfectly for the visitors.
Jacob Murphy put Newcastle ahead after just four minutes, but things went downhill for the Champions League side from there.
Lucas Paqueta equalised on 35 minutes, with Sven Botman scoring a disastrous own goal just before half-time.
Newcastle could not create much at all as they looked for an equaliser of their own and the Hammers appeared the more threatening, eventually scoring the fourth goal of the game.
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It was Tomas Soucek who got West Ham’s third, prodding home a rebound from a Nick Pope save on 97 minutes.
Shearer did not like what he saw from his former side, posting on X at the interval: ‘What terrible first half from Newcastle. Sloppy and leggy. Too many errors.’
The former England striker added after the final whistle: ‘That was awful. No better 2nd half. Not one positive. Lazy. Leggy. Lethargic. Well done West Ham.’
‘We are hugely disappointed and frustrated with ourselves.’
Howe sounded equally disappointed, telling Sky Sports: ‘I can’t really defend the performance, it was really disappointing after that start. I thought we could control the game but we didn’t. We let West Ham in with some uncharacteristic errors.
‘Collectively, we were off today and you could see that. We gave ourselves problems. We are hugely disappointed and frustrated with ourselves because we’ve missed a huge opportunity for back-to-back wins.
‘The feel of the team was wrong. We were lacking in physicality today.
‘I have to go away and reflect on it. This falls into the category that we didn’t perform. This was a poor performance but they happen. It leaves us with a gap to bridge and we can only do that with consistency and we haven’t found that this season.’
It was a crucial win for the home side and a first for new manager Nuno Espirito Santo, although they remain in the relegation zone.
The victory takes the Hammers to just seven points from 10 Premier League outings, still three points adrift of Burnley in 17th.
‘We deserved the win in the end.’
West Ham captain Jarrod Bowen told Sky Sports after the win over Newcastle: ‘It’s been a difficult period. I always say the same thing – we’re the only ones that can change it. We did that today.
‘We’ve got potential as a group, we just haven’t shown it enough recently. The potential we’ve got, we have to understand it, go out there and show it. Today was a start for that, I thought.’
He added to the BBC: ‘Sometimes you think your luck is against you and it will never change but we stuck in there. I don’t think we did anything different in terms of preparation. It is us as players understanding the situation we are in and wanting to change that.
‘Different things have gone against us, set-pieces have gone against us and defending our goal. This time we deserved the win in the end.’
Newcastle are having an underwhelming start to their own Premier League campaign, with the defeat leaving them 13th in the table, with just 12 points from 10 games.
However, they did come into this fixture in good form after winning their last three matches in all competitions.
A heavy schedule will have contributed to the ‘leggy’ performance, having beaten Spurs in the Carabao Cup in midweek and Benfica in the Champions League a week earlier, with a victory over Fulham in the Premier League in between.