Eddie Howe 'hugely frustrated' by what £55m Man City man helped do v Newcastle United

Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe was left "hugely frustrated" by Manchester City's injury-time winner at St James' Park.

The Magpies led 2-1 at half-time after goals from Alexander Isak and Anthony Gordon cancelled out Bernardo Silva's opener. But the introduction of Kevin De Bruyne in the second half inspired Man City in the remaining 20 minutes.

De Bruyne equalised in the 74th minute before setting up Oscar Bobb's winner at the end.

“You just hope he’s rusty and not up to full speed yet, but then he comes on and delivers that and you think, ‘Well, there’s no rustiness there’," said Howe. "He was straight in.

"You know his qualities, and you just hope you can minimise the space for it and take away the opportunities for him to hurt you with his range. He crosses the ball so well, although for the majority of the time he was on, we dealt with those situations really well.

"But of course for his goal, we didn’t defend well enough, and then for the goal at the end, that was hugely frustrating. With just three minutes to see out, you thought we were almost there."

United have developed an unfortunate habit of scoring first but losing with that scenario playing out in four of the last eight matches.

Howe said: “I think we have (seen that before). "There was so much promise and so many good things, so to be sat here with nothing is very, very painful. The lads have given so much physically in that game.

"The first half was everything that we want to be. We wanted to be aggressive and front foot. When you do that, you take risks, but those risks were worth it. You could see that it paid off at the other end.

"We still wanted to do that in the second half, we still wanted to play the same way, but we just couldn’t deliver that in the second half."

Newcastle's defeat to last year's quadruple was their fourth straight Premier League defeat, and their sixth in seven games, which has seen them slip to 10th in the table.