Hurzeler: We dominated Newcastle

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Head coach reflects on 3-1 defeat at St James' Park.

Charlie Hanson

2026-05-02T18:05+01:00

Fabian Hurzeler and Eddie Howe shake hands before kick-off. 📸 by James Boardman.

Fabian Hurzeler felt his team were hard done by in their 3-1 defeat to Newcastle United on Saturday afternoon.

How do you look back on that game? It ended up being quite dramatic...

You could say it was dramatic. We dominated the game. We started the game well, had two good chances and then Newcastle scored out of nowhere. Then the second goal is from a set-piece and we lost our overall structure. But we always had the feeling that we could win this game, we created so much. We shouldn’t have conceded so easily, we should manage the key moments of the game better. On the other side we created so many chances so we have to be more ruthless. When we focus on the performance, you don’t see a lot of teams dominating here like we did. We will take away the positives, we will analyse the game too, because in certain key moments we weren’t at our standards, we have to show personality and character and then we try to bounce back.

Did you sense a nervousness from the home crowd, given their recent run of results?

I think you could feel it from when we created the first chance, you could feel it on the pitch and also in the stadium that everyone felt like we were there to take this game. We were unlucky, we missed chances, we weren’t able to manage the key moments well. We can definitely defend better as a team, we can manage the key moments better, but if we focus on how we tried to play our football, I think the players did everything they could do. They always had the belief they could win this game, so we will take the positives away.

How is Mats Wieffer and what’s the injury?

I don’t know yet, we will have to wait. It’s his ankle.

You tweaked your team at half-time, swapping the flanks Yankuba Minteh and Kaoru Mitoma were on. What was the thinking behind that?

We gave their full-backs a different job to do – I don’t think it’s an easy job to adapt to one winger and then have to face another one. I think we gave Yankuba Minteh the space to be successful. Sometimes you have good days, sometimes you can have bad days but you must always show effort and that’s what he did. He still created danger, just not the danger that we’d hoped. On the other side, Kaoru Mitoma was good, he was in the game, he liked the role and he did it quite well. It wasn’t the offensive part that lost us the game, but we have to keep going.

Was the size difference between the teams a factor in the result?

When you’re smaller than another team, you have to make sure you use your body in a good way – we are not known as a physical team, but we can be aggressive and we pressed intensely. I won’t make an excuse about this.