Eddie Howe gives what he believes are the reasons for Newcastle United's poor display against Bournemouth

Newcastle United were outclassed, outrun and outgunned by a Bournemouth team that just seemed to want it more at St James' Park on Saturday lunchtime.

Bournemouth left St James' Park with three points after hammering Newcastle 4-1, and in truth, it could have been even more than that.

Right from the first whistle, it was clear that Bournemouth were just up for it. They were the first to every ball, their passing showed more intent and they had Newcastle on the back foot immediately.

The Magpies had spells where they were on top, but for the most part, the urgency that had defined their play during that impressive nine-game winning streak was sorely absent. Even when on the ball, we lacked any kind of ideas to try and break through the Bournemouth defence.

Eddie Howe blamed the busy fixture schedule for today's defeat

The game did come around quickly for Newcastle with it being the third game in just six days, but Bournemouth had 11 first-team players missing and had a bench full of kids. If you want to play the excuse game it was fairly even.

Speaking after the game, Eddie Howe told NUFC TV was asked if Bournemouth played Newcastle at their own game. How disagreed and went on to say that he wouldn't put this defeat all on the players as it wasn't that they weren't trying, it was that they were knackered.

"That's their game, their game's their game and they executed it much better than we did today and we have to acknowledge that and accept that and then try and fix that for the next game.

"I don't think we'll go too hard, initially, on the players because I think it just looked like physically we were out on our feet, so I think it's just a physical issue more than anything else."

Newcastle can't handle three games in a week - what are we going to do next season?

This is the squad depth issue rearing its ugly head again, and yet we still won't spend this month to bring in reinforcements.

That's not so much a dig at the club, either, by the way, that's the frustration with PSR coming through again. It is looking very likely that we'll be in Europe again next year and playing three games a week will be the norm again, and if this is how we handle it, we've got a real problem.

PSR will not allow us to spend as much as we need to in order to be able to compete on all fronts next season as the addition of one or two players absolutely will not cut it.