On an evening that marked the return of Kieran Trippier and Callum Wilson, the Magpies are now hoping Joe Willock and Bruno Guimaraes will avoid a spell on the sidelines.
Willock was withdrawn at half-time after colliding with fellow teammates Sean Longstaff while Guimaraes was brought off inside the remaining 10 minutes.United boss Eddie Howe said: “Joe took a knock to part of his leg and didn’t feel 100% [at half-time]. Bruno felt a glute, I believe, but hopefully they’re not big problems.
“It’s an art to get the team into the right physical and mental condition to play. We look forward to the intense period we’ve got coming up, we need to keep the squad in good health if we can but the two lads tonight are the concerns. We’ll see how we look.”Guimaraes then took to social media after the game to referenced his injury. He said: “A night to forget! I hope the injury isn’t too serious. Thank you for the support.”
Goals in either half from Tomas Soucek and Aaron Wan-Bissaka brought an end to the Magpies’ three-game winning streak. As a result, Howe’s side missed the opportunity to move up to sixth and one point behind the top four.
Next up for the Magpies is a trip to Crystal Palace on Saturday afternoon. Only Palace, Everton and Southampton have scored fewer goals than Newcastle this campaign.”I’m pretty pleased with the first 60 minutes albeit we’re losing the game 2-0. We opened them up and had chances to score. Up to that point I was pretty pleased but the last 30 minutes I didn’t enjoy. We tried a bit too hard to score. We’ll rue that when we watch the game back.
“For both goals we know we made individual mistakes. It was disappointing from our perspective. Very uncharacteristic from us because we’ve defended well in recent weeks.Assessing his side’s performance, West Ham boss Julen Lopetegui adde: “We are happy. I think that we played well. We played with one identity and we were able to overcome a very good team. They started well and it is always good to have more confidence.
“They had two chances and I think that in the second half we did well and deserved to win. I am happy for the players, for the team and for the fans. They will have to drive a lot of miles so we are happy for them. We look forward to the next challenge. We are happy but we have a lot of work to do. “