Newcastle 0-2 West Ham

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Newcastle's season continued to blow hot and cold with a hugely disappointing Monday night defeat at home to a West Ham team who have been awful all season.

Eddie Howe couldn't have asked for a kinder fixture on paper, but after a fast, strong, confident start, they we caught by a classic sucker punch.

Counter attacking to win a corner, a ball was swung into the box, Lloyd Kelly (replacing suspended Dan Burn) allowing giant Tomas Soucek the freedom of the box in an absolute dereliction of duty, and he duly nodded home.

For every spectacular block Kelly makes, he seems to drop at least three bollocks, tonight being entirely incapable of finding a black and white shirt, looping endless headed clearances into dangerous West Ham attacking areas.

Quite whom he was trying to mark for Wan-Bissaka's (yes, Wan-two-career-goals-Bissaka) goal is anybody's guess.

This was definitely "one of those games", when it never looks like going your way, but it was truly alarming how quickly we looked drained of confidence and ideas following their early goal.

Gordon provided nothing on the right (and should have scored), and we're just not capable of getting any real service into Isak.

Two shots on target from 18 tells its own story.

We were architects of our own downfall here, encouraging West Ham, and while our general performance was just about decent, we were shaky in defence (mainly Kelly) and toothless in attack.

Until we can sort out those problems, we'll never be a consistent team, and failure to capitalise on the congested table tonight allows others to take pole position.