Toon skipper: Blame us for slump

CAPTAIN Jamaal Lascelles has revealed that Newcastle players dished out some harsh criticism to each other in the home dressing room after a seventh defeat in eight matches.

rafa Benitez’s side have fallen from fourth to 16th and now sit just one point above the bottom three before tomorrow’s trip to Arsenal.

Their latest loss came at home to Everton on Wednesday night and Lascelles believes now is the time for players to start holding each other to account.

‘There were a few home truths said afterwards,’ said the 24-year-old defender. ‘It was not calm. I don’t want to leave it too late for things like that to be said.

‘We are not in a great position and sometimes things need to be said that players do not want to hear. Hopefully, it will get a reaction. Now is the time for characters and big personalities to come out of their shells. We got ourselves in this situation, so we have to get ourselves out of it.

‘Now that I am back from injury, I’m going to be on to people. It’s not like the boys are not working hard. It’s not like a couple of years back when I had a go at people. It’s nothing like that at all.

‘It’s just about working hard as a team, sticking together, looking back on how well we were doing (early in the season) compared to now.’

Sportsmail revealed yesterday that the major sticking point of Amanda Staveley’s proposed £300million takeover at Newcastle is her concern over possible relegation. Good results will help but for that to happen Lascelles says the team must cut out individual errors.

Goalkeeper Karl Darlow was the guilty party against Everton as he gifted Wayne rooney the only goal.

Lascelles said: ‘You do not want to be conceding goals from individual errors. If you are going to be conceding goals in this league, it should be by your opponents playing world-class football.

‘At the start of the season, teams were scoring goals against us which had us holding our hands up saying, “OK, that’s great football”.

‘But more recently we have been making mistakes and it’s cost us. We have to sort that out, because it is unacceptable.’