Newcastle must recover quickly from Everton loss – Steve McClaren

REUTERS – Newcastle United manager Steve McClaren has challenged his team to recover fast from Saturday’s last-gasp 1-0 defeat by Everton to meet the demand of playing their second Premier League game in three days against West Bromwich Albion later on Monday.

Tom Cleverley’s 93rd minute header dealt a cruel blow at St. James’ Park on Saturday after it seemed the match was destined to end in a goalless draw but McClaren urged his side to move on.

“We have to recover. It’s tough for the players but mentally and physically we’ve got to recover, we’ve got to go again,” McClaren told the club website (www.nufc.co.uk).

“It’s a big test on Monday; I’m very, very interested to see how we react after (the Everton) game.

“Do we take the belief and confidence from our performance? Do we take it into Monday’s game, which is a massive game?

“Like Robbie (Elliot) said before the (Everton) game, we’ve got two games in three days, we’ve got no excuses: let’s go.”

Defender Daryl Janmaat echoed the comments of his manager.

“I’ve never lost a game like that before but we have no time to be mad. The next game is less than 48 hours away and that may be good for us,” Janmaat said.

“We have to recover, prepare and look forward to West Brom. We have to try and get a result there.

“It will be a tough game but there is no reason why we cannot win there. We did it last season so we know how it feels to win there, and we will remember that on Monday.”

Newcastle are third from bottom in the league with 17 points from 18 matches.

(Reporting by Shravanth Vijayakumar in Bengaluru; editing by Amlan Chakraborty)