Lewis Hall said Newcastle must put their own house in order and keep one eye on the table after Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Nottingham Forest left their European hopes hanging on other results as well.
Harvey Barnes scored his 16th goal of the season to put Newcastle in front, but Elliot Anderson struck a late equaliser against his boyhood club to deny them a win. Hall said the point was not enough on its own, with Newcastle 13th in the Premier League and six points behind seventh-placed Brighton after the match.
“We are relying on other results as well which is never what you want to be doing,” Hall said. “We need to be focused on winning the next two games and if it puts us in that position we can be really happy with how we have turned it around.”
Newcastle’s push for a return to the Champions League had already gone after a season in which they dropped 27 points from winning positions, a costly figure for a side that finished fifth last season. The race for the European places remains tight, though, and any slip by the teams above them could still matter.
Hall did not hide the size of the problem when asked about Newcastle’s tendency to let leads slip. “I wouldn’t say soft but it is something we’ve looked at and something to try to put right,” he said. “Throughout the season you are going to lose points from winning positions - 27 sounds a lot but in seasons where we have done well we’ve always dropped points from winning positions.”
He said European football of any kind would still give the club and the supporters something to celebrate. “Any European football would be good for the club and the fans,” he said. “It’s a big number, we have two games left and have to try not to let it happen again.”
Newcastle host West Ham on Saturday before finishing the season at Fulham, and those two matches now shape the rest of their campaign. With Brighton sitting seventh and Newcastle six points back, the margin for error has all but gone.
What remains is a plain test of whether Newcastle can finish strongly enough to make the table work in their favor, or whether a season that began with bigger ambitions will end with regret over the points they let get away.
