Rafa Benitez believes his Newcastle players ‘panicked’ before Bournemouth equalised in the 89th minute of the 2-2 draw at the Vitality Stadium on Saturday.
United led 2-0 at half-time courtesy of a brace from Dwight Gayle, but were pegged back in the final 10 minutes by a pair of easily preventable goals from Adam Smith and former Magpies midfielder Dan Gosling after controlling the game and missing two gilt-edged chances to make it 3-0.
A lack of Premier League experience in the Newcastle squad has regularly been lamented by Benitez in post-match interviews but the Spaniard feels his players should have coped better in the final 10 minutes after Smith halved the deficit for the hosts.
“When you have control and miss a chance, then concede a goal, you are panicking,” Benitez told the Shields Gazzette.
“We have to learn how to deal with that. We need to have the composure to carry on doing what we were doing earlier in the game.
“You have to give credit to them, because they were pushing and they have strong players with pace.
“But we just had to be better with the way we defended. A couple of players were a little bit tired, so we had to make the substitutions to have fresh legs.”
Benitez will hope his players can react to and learn from that setback when they travel to face his former club Liverpool at Anfield next weekend.
