Anthony Gordon has now shared what it was that Eddie Howe told his Newcastle United team before going on to lose to Man City in the final few minutes.
Questions have been raised about Howe after Newcastle once again were too defensive and failed to hold on for a win or a crucial draw late on in the game yesterday.
However, in an interview with TNT Sports, Gordon claimed that the message from the head coach was actually to go for the third goal and kill the game, the team just weren’t able to execute it.
Gordon says Howe’s plan was to attack the game
Newcastle had looked very threatening on the transition all night and Alexander Isak, who scored a brilliant goal in the top corner, could have actually had a hat-trick in the game.
But in the second half Newcastle were just inviting too much pressure onto themselves and it looked inevitable that City would eventually go on to punish them given the amount of quality they have.
It was tough for Howe who simply doesn’t have the same kind of players to bring off his Newcastle bench as Pep Guardiola who was able to substitute in Kevin de Bruyne to change the game.
He won’t be using that as an excuse, but the way the game played out definitely wasn’t how he would have liked his team to attack the second half after such an impressive opening 45 minutes which saw the Magpies lead.
After the game, Gordon was asked what the half-time message was: “Just to go for the third goal, to go for the throat while we could and I don’t feel like we did that and we haven’t done that enough lately like we usually do so we need to get back into that habit.”
Howe needs more from his Newcastle players
It’s all well and good claiming that everyone is fatigued due to the pile up of fixtures this season having been in the Champions League for the first time in two decades, but that’s out of the way now.
After this two-week break, Newcastle will again be playing just one game a week aside from their FA Cup tie against Fulham, so there are no excuses as to why anyone should feel too tired to last a full 90 minutes.
Alexander Isak has struggled with injuries and understandably that will limit how much he can put into a game, but looking at his entire career on Tyneside you’d struggle to think of a game in which he looked like he was running himself into the ground for the 90 minutes.
If Newcastle are going to climb back up the Premier League then not only will Howe have to learn from mistake he’s made in previous games, but his players simply must be putting in more of an effort to execute the manager’s plans.
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