Newcastle United boss John Carver was left to rue a ‘mad five minutes’ after his side’s 3-2 defeat against Swansea City.
United went 1-0 up after 20 minutes after an error from Jordi Amat but they ‘shot themselves in the foot’ just before half time as Nelson Oliveira headed in from Sigurdsson’s corner to level the scores at 1-1 just seconds before half time.
Sigurdsson then turned from goal provider to goal scorer 4 minutes into the second half, as Oliviera was involved again – he dummied the pass as the Iceland international picked out the bottom corner to put the Swans 2-1 into the lead.
Jack Cork added a third, before Newcastle’s second after 87 minutes proved to be too little too late, as they now increase their run of straight defeats to 7.
Carver felt that his side played ok in the first half, but admits that they’re in a relegation battle:
“It has been a (relegation) battle for four or five weeks now, and we know we`re in a battle,”
“We can`t hide from it, we`ve got to deal with it and get on with it.
“It`s always hard to take when you`ve lost a game, but I thought in the first half we actually did quite well.
Carver added that a ‘mad five minutes’ cost them a chance of getting something from the game:
“And, give or take five mad minutes just before half-time and just after half-time I think we could have got something out of the game.
“We were 1-0 up we had a great chance when Riviere had a header that gets saved by the goalkeeper and then we shot ourselves in the foot yet again just before half-time. It`s disappointing.
“We know for a fact that we don`t have the biggest of sides and we conceded with a set-play again.
“It`s not as though Swansea opened us up – they haven`t done that, it`s come from a set-play. We`ve got to deal with set-plays a lot better.
“I don`t think Tim Krul had a save to make other than picking the ball out of his net in the first half. He had a bit more to do in the second half and they caused us a few more problems.’
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