'It's been there all season': Eddie Howe now addresses concerns around Newcastle United's inconsistency

Consistency is a word that has been very absent from Newcastle United as a whole this season. From individual players, to team form between games and even form between two halves of the same game, consistency has been lacking.

The 4-3 win over Nottingham Forest on Sunday shone a spotlight on that inconsistency as Newcastle went from brilliant to absent from one half to the next.

And while Newcastle halted a run of Premier League defeats with that win, if you look further back through the results, the Magpies have actually done really well.

As fans, we do tend to lose our heads a bit after one defeat, two in a row and the meltdown begins and if there's a third there's absolute hell-on! Sometimes it pays to take a step back and look at the results before that.

Newcastle have won 13 games out of the last 16 - is the inconsistency a myth?

Newcastle have won 13 of the last 16 games, but the defeats all came close together. If those three defeats were peppered throughout the previous run of wins, nobody would really bat an eye, it's just how they tend to come in clusters that sets the alarm bells ringing.

It's this step-back approach that Eddie Howe has chosen to take when addressing the claims of inconsistency in his pre-Liverpool presser (via The Chronicle), while admitting that it is something they need to work on, he says it's not as bad as it looks.

"It's been there all season to a degree. I think there's been games where we've been frustrated with ourselves - but then when you mention the statistic - 13 wins out of 16 - that's not an inconsistent team.

"I'd certainly take that again in the next 16 games but I try to be very honest and acknowledge the fact that we have been inconsistent at times and Sunday certainly reflected that."

Could Newcastle go on another run of wins after Forest?

That being said, it would be nice if the win over Nottingham Forest kick-started another run of wins, please.

Although, if we're being honest, we'd take a draw tomorrow night at Anfield, that would actually represent a good step forward, avoiding defeat at that cursed stadium.

We'll save the win for next month at Wembley!