Eddie Howe responds to Nottingham Forest's…

Eddie Howe responds to Nottingham Forest's 'whingebags' barb and hails 'stronger' Newcastle

Eddie Howe has laughed off post-match comments from Jonjo Shelvey claiming his former Newcastle United team-mates are ‘whingebags’.

Shelvey was part of the Nottingham Forest team which lost in heartbreaking fashion to Howe’s side at the City Ground last night.

The hosts took the lead through an impudent finish from Emmanuel Dennis only to concede twice, including a stoppage time penalty, to Alexander Isak and in doing so lose an unbeaten home league record that stretched back to September.

It has also left them treading water in the battle to beat the Premier League drop and meant Shelvey’s first reunion with the club where he spent seven years ended in disappointment and frustration at a number of calls which went against the Reds.

Speaking afterwards the midfielder said: “"I didn't think they would whinge as much as they did on the pitch but it's a game of football at the end of the day so I'm gonna give my all for this club. As soon as you go over the white line I'm there to win and obviously we didn't today but we'll come again.

“There's a lot of whingebags in their team to be fair and I'll tell them that now. I'll tell them in a jokey way but obviously, I hope they get into Europe I've got nothing but positive words to say about the whole club, the people, the staff. Made a lot of friends there so happy for them to keep pushing up the league."

Howe was asked about that comment but didn’t seem too ruffled. “That's a good expression," the Newcastle head coach told reporters. "It's a difficult one. On the pitch, even I don't know quite what goes on there. Certainly I've only got positive things to say about Jonjo."

Howe went on to explain his belief that the right result had been reached albeit in dramatic fashion.

“The majority of the game, I thought there was a ten-15 minute spell in the first half when they scored and we lost our way a little bit. Apart from that I thought we were really, really good. It had a feeling, we had so many chances in the first half, it wasn’t going to be our night. But the lads kept going and I thought we deserved to win the game.

“I am very pleased with the outputs the players are giving physically, we are very fit, I thought we saw that in the game today, we kept going and we were the stronger team.”

Are Newcastle fitter than Forest? Have your say here

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