Last Updated: Mon, 26 Mar 2012 08:55
Roy Hodgson hailed his West Brom side's second half response following Sunday's disappointing 3-1 home defeat to Newcastle.
The Baggies chief was disappointed after watching the Magpies storm into a three-goal lead at the Hawthorns on Sunday afternoon thanks to Papiss Cisse's double and Hatem Ben Arfa's strike.
And, while the game looked to be out of Albion's reach barring a miraculous second half fightback, Hodgson was pleased with the performance which was capped by substitute Shane Long's seventh goal of the season in the 53rd minute.
The Baggies could not add to the scoreline and, when they were reduced to ten men when James Morrison limped off after Hodgson had used up all of his substitutes, Newcastle held on to seal the maximum points.
Afterwards, Hodgson told his post-match press conference: "When it's 3-0 at half-time you are looking down the barrel of the gun and you're looking at a bad day, especially as we weren't playing very well.
"In the second half I thought, to the players' credit, they gave it a good shot to get back into it.
"Getting the early goal gave us a bit of momentum but that certainly disappeared when Morrison got injured and had to go off because we had to do it with ten men having made all our substitutions.
"In the end the only solace we can take from the game is that we did win the second half, which is not easy to do when you're 3-0 down.
"That's probably the task we set ourselves - to at least win the second half.
"We knew it would be hard to get three or four goals and not concede any but at least we tried to make certain we won it so that we reduced the damage.
"But we were caught badly on the counter-attack in the first half with two of the goals.
"We left ourselves very open and lost the ball in areas we had no need to lose it.
"Newcastle were very quick to break out and profit from it.
"Ben made two great saves and they scored three good goals but apart from that a lot of the action was at the other end of the field.
"But it's a little bit late when you are three goals down."
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