Nottingham Forest boss Steve Cooper admits they were floored by Newcastle’s late winner on Friday night.
With the scores locked at 1-1, Alexander Isak produced the winner for the visitors via the penalty spot.
Cooper said: “It is always the worst way to lose, in the last couple of minutes. Especially having fought in the game. We came up against a really good team and we knew it would be like that, possibly. I am just disappointed with our own decisions around the goals. The timing of the goals – in injury time in the first half and then obviously in the second. It is something we have to look at ourselves on because we made some poor football decisions. I think it is a foul on Andre Ayew [for the first goal]. I won’t moan too much about that. It was a strange performance from the ref but we have to look at ourselves first.
“We have given three penalties away in the last three games and all of them have been self-inflicted. I am disappointed with the timing of the first goal. See the half out so we can sort a few things. But things change. We blame nobody but ourselves. Newcastle managed the game well. Got the territory, played some good football and mixed it up well.
“It is never the best time to reflect, straight after the game. We go into an international break now and that makes it doubly worse. Nothing can be solves tonight, it is something we will talk about when we get back together as a group. It would have been a decent point. We are in a position with a lot of other clubs where after the break we have to back ourselves and try to finish in that group that is higher than the bottom three. It is in our hands and we have to back ourselves to do better.
“The referee wanted us to speak to our teams at half-time just to say to behave a little bit better on the pitch. No drama.”
