Newcastle United midfielder Jack Colback has confessed that he and his teammates were embarrassed by their 5-1 defeat to Crystal Palace.
The Magpies took the lead through Papiss Cisse at Selhurst Park, but James McArthur brought the Eagles level before Yannick Bolasie and Wilfried Zaha put Palace 3-1 ahead at the break.
Bolasie and McArthur netted again in the second half to seal an emphatic victory for Alan Pardew's men, leaving Colback to question the character of his team.
Colback told the club's official website: "We had a gameplan and in the first 15-20 minutes it worked perfectly. We got the goal and you could see they were rattled.
"But we let them straight back in, then I made a mistake for the second goal and that put us on the back foot again. After that it was pretty embarrassing, really. Maybe we're not strong enough character-wise. It seems as if as soon as things go bad, it goes really bad. We had that last year and probably the year before as well.
"It's something that's hanging over the team that we need to get rid of. We had shown signs of improvement but the Leicester game and this one have really set us back quite a lot."
Newcastle dropped into the relegation zone as a result of their defeat.
Simon Sinclair
