Another defeat for Kevin Keegan added to Newcastle’s woes as Blackburn snatched a last-gasp winner to steal all the points at St James Park. We got the panel’s reaction to such a confidence-bashing defeat…

Tom

“Well that was a sickener wasn’t it?

This was a game we should have won. We had the majority of the chances, Owen should have had a hattrick, but we spurned the chances. On so many occassions the hard work had been done, Blackburn’s defence and Brad Friedel in the Blackburn goal beaten, only for the ball to be sliced wide. Prior to yesterday’s game, I heard Owen speaking on the radio saying that there was a lack of confidence throughout the side. Clearly this is true and it’s affecting him as well. Last night, he was back on saying that it was his fault we’d lost because he’d failed with his chances. I felt a bit sorry for him blaming himself alone, but then again he did have the chances but didn’t take them.

As the game wound down, I was resigning myself to another game without a win, but I I was thinking, at least we’ll take a point. Wrong. Last minute of normal time, and Blackburn made one of their very few breaks and took advantage of our shaky defence, to snatch all three points in a smash and grab raid.

It was against the run of play, and it was cruel, but we should have taken the chances we had, but didn’t.

We’ve fallen into a relegation battle, and have some tricky times ahead of us.”

Jonny

“There really is no hope for us is there?

Even when we play well, we still lose. What’s that going to do to the confidence in the dressing room?

We proved against Rovers that we AREN’T a bad side, we just have nothing whatsoever when it comes to luck. On another, with confidence high, we would have beaten Blackburn easily. But when you’re slumping near the bottom of the league and nothing is going your way, this sort of thing happens.

What we need to do is go to Anfield, lose, forget about it, then get ready to stay up starting with victory against Birmingham.

MOTM: James Milner was quite prominent in United attack.”