Eddie Howe 'agrees' with Alan Shearer's brutal Newcastle United claim after Brentford defeat

The Magpies lost 4-2 at the Gtech Community Stadium. Eddie Howe’s side twice came from behind in the first-half as Alexander Isak and Harvey Barnes cancelled out Bryan Mbeumo and Yoane Wissa’s goals.

United, however, had no response in the second interval. Nathan Collins put the Bees in front before substitute Kevin Schade put the result beyond doubt in the 90th minute.

Reacting to the defeat, Shearer wrote on X: “Brentford worthy winners. Much better team. Newcastle were hopeless defensively, and that’s being kind!!”

Howe, in his post-match press conference, admitted his was “very disappointed” with his side’s defensive display.

“Very disappointed with how we defended today,” said Howe. “The four goals we conceded we’ll look back on with regret because it wasn’t just individual mistakes, it was collective mistakes for all the goals, especially the third goal.

“We fought back really well from conceding twice and the game is very much in the balance in that moment. The third goal is really disappointing from our perspective, a long free-kick, we don’t deal well with the first contact and really poorly with the second contact. That probably affected us.

“Before that we looked tight at the back and the issue was at the other end of the pitch. Now in the last two games we’ve scored five goals and looked a really good attacking team today.

“Attacking work was really strong in both halves but lone behold we go and concede seven in those games from nowhere really. Difficult to work out because structurally fine but I just think there were a lot of errors today.”