Slav surprised at confidence factor

Slaven Bilic was surprised that Newcastle were the more confident team at St James’ Park.

The manager said: ‘We prepared for the game all week and had a good warm-up, so I thought we were going to start with more confidence than them because we were up in the table, we were unbeaten for a number of games.

‘They have improved a lot recently, but still they were down and we were counting on the confidence to be on our side. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case. We have to give them credit but definitely we helped them in that.

‘In the second half, we can talk about positive things. We can talk about good spirit, turning the game a little bit around, scoring a goal and then putting them under pressure and having a few chances at the end of the game.
‘We had a great chance to equalise.

“Also they had chances in the second half on the counter-attack as we took that risk, so we could have nicked a point and it wouldn’t be the first time.

‘But to be fair, we have to admit, unfortunately, that they were better and they deserved to beat us, they deserved three points especially with their performance in the first half.’