Source: Northern_Echo
Hughton remains positive
HAVING witnessed Newcastle United’s unbeaten start to life in the Championship come to an end at Blackpool last night, caretaker boss Chris Hughton insisted that his players did not buckle at Bloomfield Road.
The Magpies stay third behind West Brom and Middlesbrough after Brett Ormerod and Jason Euell grabbed a goal in either half to overturn Andy Carroll’s first half header.
Blackpool dominated the first half and were deserved winners in front of a hostile and passionate near 10,000 crowd.
“We have to re-group, this is a setback,” said Hughton. “We were poor in the first half but we were better in the second half and finished strongly.
The only thing we can do is regroup for Saturday and another big game. We’re going to go through a period where we need all the bodies we can get.
We can go again and win the game on Saturday.
“I wouldn’t accuse the players of buckling under pressure, but it’s the first time we’ve had a period in the game where the opposition have been far better than us in most departments. With all their good play in the first half, though, the goal we conceded in the second half was a poor one.”
Hughton will have his players back at the training ground today in preparation for Saturday’s visit of Plymouth.
But he was keeping his cards close to his chest as his pursuit for loan signings goes on, claiming he does not know whether he will be successful before the Pilgrims visit.
Marlon Harewood, Sam Vokes and Diomansy Kamara are the three leading candidates to arrive, but the caretaker manager insisted last night nothing was close.
The return to fitness of goalscorer Carroll encouraged Hughton, but that did little to improve the frustration he was feeling after losing at Blackpool.
“We are massively disappointed, over 90 minutes we can have no complaints. Certainly in the first half they were better than us in most departments. It’s not what we’ve been used to seeing from our side in these previous games,” he said.
“They played very well, they ran off us, scrapped and fought and we found it difficult to get close to them. We were better in the second half but we weren’t good enough.”
He added: “We’ve spoken about the position we are in.
We’re there to be knocked down, we’re a big scalp wherever we go and we have to cope with that. It was fantastic atmosphere, their players rose to that and we didn’t deal with it.
“But we have to keep things in perspective. This is probably our only major down this season so far so we can’t allow ourselves to get carried away.
“What we will do is analyse why it wasn’t as good as we wanted it to be. We got a response in the second half and we will expect another one against Plymouth.”
