Alan Pardew: "We couldn't cope"

Newcastle United manager Alan Pardew has admitted that his side could not cope with Arsenal in the final 20 minutes of their 7-3 defeat on Saturday night.

Despite Newcastle levelling three times, Arsenal ran riot with four further unanswered goals.

Pardew admitted that instead of holding on to the draw, his side "couldn't cope" with Arsenal's pressure towards the end.

"I thought when we got back to 3-3 we should have shut up shop," Sky Sports News quotes Pardew as saying. "The last 15-20 minutes was a fresh team against a tired team and perhaps a bit of inexperience on our bench resulted in the scoreline.

"We're just so disappointed that we didn't get something out of it before then. The goals we conceded before then were not, not good and that's been our problem.

"For 70 minutes it was pretty tight, I thought we were giving a good account of ourselves but their freshness and the brightness towards the end of the game was just too much for us and we couldn't cope."

Newcastle are now just three points above the Premier League drop zone in 15th.