Newcastle United legend Alan Shearer has slammed his former team for their performance in the 1-0 defeat against Brighton & Hove Albion on Saturday.
Rafael Benitez’s side slipped to yet another defeat in the Premier League against the Seagulls, meaning that they still have not won a league game so far this season.
And Shearer wasn’t impressed by the Magpies: “It was poor today, but you’ve still got to do the defending from the corner,” he said on Match of the Day [20/10, 78:79]. “Poor in the first place from [Yoshinori] Muto, gives the ball away in a dangerous position.
“You’ve still got to defend the corner and Newcastle didn’t do that. [Shane] Duffy outmuscles [Federico] Fernandez, they get the ball back, Izquierdo’s shot and it takes a couple of deflections, the last one being off [Beram] Kayal. No luck, but Brighton were very, very well organised. But from a Newcastle point of view, not good enough.”
OPINION
Shearer is right, Newcastle simply weren’t good enough against Brighton. They huffed and they puffed after the Seagulls went ahead but they never really looked like breaking down Chris Hughton’s resolute defence. It wasn’t a terrible performance but it showed that the Magpies don’t have enough quality in the team to break down packed defences. There is no clever number 10 to unlock the door when teams are sitting back, and the team’s only tactic seemed to be to chuck the ball into the box as many times as possible until something stuck. That isn’t good enough at this level and the hosts were found out at St James’ Park yesterday. Shearer is right, too, to criticise Muto for his part in the goal. He gave the ball away cheaply in a dangerous area of the pitch and it was a simple lack of concentration from the Japan international. As Shearer said: not good enough.