Newcastle captain Steven Taylor hailed the confidence within the Newcastle squad after they claimed their fourth win in a row with a 1-0 victory over Liverpool.
Ayoze Perez scored the only goal in the second half as the Magpies continued their recent resurgence and Taylor believes his team-mates are at last getting the rewards for their recent efforts.
“The belief is back now and that’s what we needed,” he told BT Sport 1. “I think we showed today what we’re all about and we caught them on the counter attack many times.
“First half we tried to get down the outside but they’re very well organised, the ability that they’ve got, they could catch us on the counter-attack themselves.”
Manager Alan Pardew has come in for much criticism from the Newcastle fans and Taylor is delighted to see his boss turning things around.
“It was a great atmosphere today,” he said. “Everybody is fully behind him and the main thing is, we keep winning and everybody is happy.
“It’s exciting and obviously we have got a bit of momentum going into the next game but we just keep taking it one game at a time and not getting carried away.”
Pardew is hopeful he can win the fans around and believes that criticism is just part of the experience of managing in such a footballing hotbed.
“This is Newcastle and you have to take note that there are real highs,” he said. “I think Bobby Robson said the highs are massive here and the lows are equally as low. He needed a tin hat at times, I need a tin hat at times but when the good times come this is as good a city to be in as any.”
Gabriel Obertan came off after 27 minutes with what looked like a thigh injury and Pardew admitted the outlook is bleak for the Frenchman.
“Losing Obertan was real blow because he has been outstanding,” he said. “It looks like he’s got a bad injury so we’re all really disappointed for him.”
Mario Balotelli is still searching for his first Premier League goal for Liverpool and caused a minor controversy after emerging very late for the second-half kick-off but manager Brendan Rodgers said: “It has no bearing at all on the result.”
The Reds have claimed just 14 points from their opening 10 games after finishing second in the league last year and Rodgers admits he can understand why supporters may be becoming frustrated.
“The progress this season is; we’re going to be a slow process because there was so many changes,” he said. “We haven’t started how we would like but we will improve. I think we showed that in the period when I first came here after six months.
“Understandably for the supporters it will be a difficult period for them but we can only continue to work hard and we’ll analyse today’s game — it was fairly straight forward.
“We didn’t create enough. We had enough of the ball, we had enough of the possession, found it in good areas, we just didn’t create enough in the final third and then we gave away a very bad goal to lose the game 1-0. We’ll just continue to work and work as well as we have done over the past couple of years and we’re confident we’ll get the results.”
