Steve Bruce has revealed part of Newcastle United's internal debrief after the disastrous defeat at Brighton & Hove Albion.
The Toon head coach says that coaching staff could not argue with the physical stats in terms of distance covered by his Newcastle players on the night and the post-mortem proved a difficult affair in terms of questioning his side's effort at the Amex Stadium.
But both players and staff agreed that the quality of the display was far from the standard expected at United and that change was needed in the build-up to the 2-2 draw against Tottenham Hotspur, a performance which was much improved.
Bruce said: "Look, in football, you can play poorly but it's sometimes the manner of it.
"What I will enlighten you with is physically, they were our best physical stats of the whole season two weeks ago at Brighton, so it wasn't for the lack of effort or endeavour.
"We just didn't play well enough on the day.
"When you have a performance like that, the one thing you need is a response, and certainly, the players to a man have responded in the right way."
United boss Bruce made five changes to his side which included the return of former Scotland international Matt Ritchie, a player that had been involved in training ground spat earlier this year.
Bruce left out Ryan Fraser because of a niggle but insisted he was eager to play a side that had trained together for the most-part of the international break.
Bruce said: "It was important that we picked a team that had been together for the last two weeks – we didn't pick to many who had been away on international duty, so there was a certain freshness about us which I think we needed, and thankfully it worked."
