“BULLIED? THAT’S NOT THE STORY…” — MATTHIAS JAISSLE FIRES BACK AT PUNDIT CLAIMS AFTER LEEDS DEFEAT AS FORMER NEWCASTLE BOSS WEIGHS IN
The Magpies’ 4-1 hammering at Leeds attracted a lot of critics including comments from ex-manager Steve Bruce
Matthias Jaissle has urged his players to show “more hunger” when they face Hull City at St James’ Park this weekend.
Jaissle rejected claims that his Newcastle United team were “bullied” off the ball at Elland Road this week – but insists his players must show more desire than they displayed against Leeds after losing too many second balls. Newcastle were undone by two throw-ins that were half-cleared while Dominic Calvert-Lewin dominated in the air and tossed Malick Thiaw and Sven Botman aside.
Sky Sports pundit Don Goodman continually stated Newcastle were bullied by the Leeds attack, and former Newcastle boss Steve Bruce called Newcastle “naive” during his commentary on Talksport. Bruce said: “They’re a little bit naive in the whole defensive outlook of what they’re trying to achieve. It looks great when it comes off and but when it goes badly wrong it’s awful to experience because they’ve just been so naive.”
And while Jaissle did not offer the ex-Sunderland striker or Bruce any air-time in his Press conference, he believes his players will learn their lessons.
Jaissle said: “It is something that we must learn from the first half. I said after the Bournemouth game that there are fundamentals. You call it aggressiveness in the duels. That is one part of it, and being ready to collect second balls. We need to be hungrier on second balls.
“If these small margins are missing, which we saw in the statistics, the balance drops to the opposition. If that happens, you get punished in the Premier League. It is something that happened in the first half, and we said that there was clarity in the room.
“The learning curve needs to be really fast and we won’t search for excuses, even with a young squad. We need to learn fast.”
And Jaissle also told his players to ignore any remarks from Bruce or Goodman when saying: “With all respect to pundits, we try to not to listen to external noise because otherwise you’d be distracted too much. So we just focus on our analysis and our potential on what we saw.
“I made it really clear on what the reasons were in our eyes. It was a really bad half, we deserved to tell the lads that and tell ourselves the truth. That’s what we did, and from there we start again.”
Newcastle now take on an in-form Hull side at St James’ Park with the Magpies eager to sign off before the international break on a high.
Jaissle said: “There has been really positive communication, body language and willingness in training. We are all very committed. It would be nice to finish this block of fixtures, before the international break, with a good result..”
