Pardew defends ‘brilliant’ Magpies

Saturday's Premier League Round-up

By Zain Alvi | 21st January 2012

Pardew defends 'brilliant' Magpies | read this item

Alan Pardew acknowledges that Newcastle United’s 5-2 defeat at the hands of Fulham has left him frustrated but defended his players, insisting that they have a lot to be proud of for their overall showing this season.

Clint Dempsey’s famous hat-trick and two second-half penalties from Danny Murphy and Bobby Zamora condemned the Magpies to an emphatic loss despite Danny Guthrie’s stunning opening goal at Craven Cottage.

Hatem Ben Arfa also scored a late consolation goal for the visitors but Pardew admitted that his side fell short of the task at hand in West London earlier this afternoon.

“The game got away from us in a quite extraordinary fashion, we were so dominant in the first half, it’s difficult sometimes to prepare for what happens,” Pardew told Sky Sports.

The manager added: “Their first goal certainly changed the course of the game, it looked like a really soft penalty. Then we had a really difficult period in the game where we didn’t handle the game very well.

“For 20 minutes today we just lost the plot and conceded, for us, poor goals. They were the type of goals we haven’t conceded all year.”

Pardew went on to express a strong sense of satisfaction in the efforts of his players this season and emphasized the defeat at Fulham became that much harder to accept given the level of confidence that the Toon exhibited to start the match.

“I can’t complain about my team, they’ve been brilliant all year and we’re in a fantastic position in the league,” Pardew elaborated.

“We couldn’t have played any better in the first half, we’ve had a complete contradiction in terms of our performance today. First half was as good as we’ve been and second half was certainly as bad as we’ve been.

“We’ll have to work hard on the training ground now to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he concluded.

The Magpies’ next Premier League fixture will be away to lowly Blackburn, who also claimed a point by drawing 1-1 at Everton today.

In the day’s remaining set of fixtures, Chelsea drew goalless at Norwich, Queens Park Rangers beat Wigan Athletic 3-1, Stoke lost 2-1 to West Bromwich Albion at the Britannia Stadium, and Sunderland won 2-0 at home to Swansea.

At Molineux Stadium, a second-half brace from Robbie Keane guided Aston Villa to a 3-2 win over the Wolves while Keane’s former club Liverpool crashed 3-1 at Bolton to lift the Trotters out of the relegation zone.

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