Eddie Howe delivers bizarre verdict when asked about concession of late goal against Bayer Leverkusen
Newcastle United's terrible habit of conceding late in games reared its ugly head once again last night as Eddie Howe's men dropped two points in the last minutes.
Bayer Leverkusen were the latest beneficiaries of Newcastle's inability to see out games as they nicked an 88th-minute goal to deny Newcastle a win and a comfortable position in the automatic qualifying spots of the Champions League.
It's a trend that has a lot of fans very concerned, as it has happened far too often this season. Even when we've won recently, we've still conceded a late goal and taken the shine off the whole affair.
In Hollywood, it's said that the ending is the most important part of the movie, as that's what everyone remembers, and that's the same in football. We beat Burnley at the weekend, but after conceding a goal in the 94th minute, the celebrations were muted.
Eddie Howe doesn't seem too bothered about conceding late goals
Speaking to the media last night, Eddie Howe was asked right away about the trend of conceding in the last minute of games, and Howe bizarrely said he's not worried about the timing of the goals.
"Yeah, I think rather than focus on sort of the lateness of the goal, it's more the way we're conceding currently.
"The timing for me is irrelevant. Yeah, the first goal in particular, to be honest, that's the one that really gets me because we worked a lot on set plays in between the last game and we didn't defend it well enough. Gave ourselves a mountain to climb and I thought the lads did really well to respond to that, but we'd done the hard work. were in front and then just case of we have to defend well and yeah we didn't for that moment."
Is the timing of these goals a problem?
Are we focused on the wrong thing?
If it was just in this game that we'd conceded so late, then fair enough, it wouldn't be as big a worry as the way in which we conceded, but when it's in almost every game, the timing is very relevant.
We're a bit concerned about Howe's blasé attitude towards this problem if we're being honest.
Unless it's us. Are we making too big a deal of this problem? Is Howe right, and it's more about how we're conceding more than when?
