Newcastle United are on the road for their next Premier League game which sees them at the London Stadium on Monday night to take on West Ham United in the 8pm kick-off live on Sky Sports.
It’s an eight-day respite that Eddie Howe plans to use to ensure his players are back in the right headspace to go again after crashing out of the FA Cup on Sunday after an extra-time battle with Brighton.
Newcastle’s performance levels have been way below where they were a couple of months ago and Howe knows what he needs to do between now and Monday.
The gaffer gave the players a couple of days off after Sunday’s defeat, admitting that the lads need a rest.
Eddie Howe admits that performances have dropped lately
Citing the small squad, Howe acknowledged the need to ensure his players are all fit. However, the gaffer refuses to blame the upcoming Carabao Cup final as a distraction or an excuse for the dropped standards, as he told Newcastle World.
“Yeah, I can’t argue with that (whether performances have dropped since reaching the final).
I think stuttering is probably a good way to put it.
Again, I don’t know whether the cup finals become a negative distraction in our performances. I don’t sense that from around the training ground.
“But certainly, our level of performance from where it was a few weeks ago has dropped. Individuals’ levels within that have dropped as well.
So we’ve got to try and pick everyone back up and get us back to our best levels for West Ham.”
Can Eddie Howe use the Anthony Gordon suspension as a motivator?
One of the individuals Howe may have been referring to there is no longer a problem, or a bigger problem depending how you look at it. Anthony Gordon has been a shadow of his best self lately, and now faces three games out after picking up a straight red card on Sunday.
Newcastle are gearing up to appeal Gordon’s suspension, which makes sense as they have nothing to lose by trying, but the feeling is that they’ve got more chance of knitting fog than they have of getting it overturned.
Hopefully Eddie can turn it into a “Do it for Gordo!” type of thing. Anything for that extra bit of motivation to get us through the back end of the season.
