The sheer frustration he was feeling was written all over Vladimír Coufal’s face as he stepped into the interview room to speak to West Ham TV at St James’ Park.
West Ham United had just let a two-goal lead slip and Newcastle United to come from 3-1 down to win, giving their own European hopes a huge boost and putting a big dent in the Hammers’ own of securing a third top-seven finish in four seasons.
As had happened too often already this season, the Irons could not control a game they put themselves in a position to win, and for the second in a row they failed to do so. However, while they took a point from a home draw with Aston Villa, this time there were none as Newcastle won 4-3.
It was the third time this season West Ham led and then lost a Premier League match, following similar outcomes at home to Manchester City and away at Brentford, while it marked the fourth time this season the Hammers had conceded four or more goals in a top-flight game.
Hearing those statistics would hardly have improved Coufal’s mood, as the Czech called on his team to find a greater level of desire and defensive resilience in their final eight matches of the campaign, starting in Tuesday’s home derby with Tottenham Hotspur.
"It's just difficult to find the right words, it's so frustrating, but when we scored to make it three-one, we just just stopped playing and we didn't play well enough," the No5 told West Ham TV. "We just sat back and waited for for them to score it looked like for me from the pitch and that's it. We just waited and waited and they turned the game.
"It's so, so difficult. You know, maybe some of the decisions in recent weeks aren't going our direction, but we are on the pitch and we can affect the decisions with how we play so it's up to us and unfortunately we lost three points today.
"From my point of view, it looked like we just sat back and we just let them play. We invited them close to our box and they have enough quality to break us through, so they were everywhere, they had every second ball it looked like they always had one extra player everywhere. They just worked harder than us."
Coufal believes West Ham need to play with a greater belief for the whole 90 minutes, as they did in the second half when trailing 0-2 to Burnley and in the UEFA Europa League round of 16 second leg against SC Freiburg, when they kicked-off 0-1 down from the first leg in Germany.
"From from my point of view, we overwhelmed Burnley in the second half absolutely because we played all-in. We beat Freiburg five-nil, because we were able to keep doing stuff that our staff asked us to do for 90 minutes, so we just need to play 90 minutes how we are asked to play and that's it.
"We need to be braver. We need to we need to play with more risk and everything and that's it."
Coufal also admitted the atmosphere created by the Newcastle fans after Alexander Isak had netted a second penalty to pull the home side within a goal with 13 minutes to play made a big difference to the way the final stages played out.
And the Czech believes the Claret and Blue Army can play a similarly inspiring part when the Hammers host local rivals Tottenham Hotspur at London Stadium on Tuesday evening.
"I love atmosphere here - it's just you know so electric and so enthusiastic and you can feel the passion of local people, it's just just amazing," he observed. "When they scored from a second penalty I thought on the pitch that the stadium was going to explode so this was amazing.
"We need this atmosphere against Tottenham on Tuesday. We need our crowd right on their toes and hopefully they will help us and hopefully we will reward them with good football and a good result."
