Newcastle had made a great start under Sam Allardyce and knew that a win at Derby on Monday evening would have lifted them level on points with Manchester United and Chelsea. With a game in hand as well, the picture would have looked very rosy indeed but Derby didn't read the script and lifted themselves off the foot of the table with their first Premier League win of the campaign. Kenny Miller's debut goal put the brakes on the Newcastle bandwagon and put an early question mark over their European credentials. Midfielder Nicky Butt is revelling in life under Allardyce but admitted to givemefootball's Ian Clarkson that the result against Derby was a huge blow.
Q:HOW IMPORTANT WILL IT BE TO BOUNCE BACK AGAINST WEST HAM THIS SUNDAY?
A:It's going to be a test of our character on Sunday, although we can't dwell on losing this game (Derby) for too long. We have to move on and show how good we are at the weekend. I'm sure all the former Newcastle boys will be desperate to prove a point. When you return to your old team, you always want to prove people wrong, I'm sure they'll want to do that but we have enough quality in our team and hopefully this will be the kick up the backside we need. Teams lose games. Obviously we're disappointed but we have to put things right against West Ham. They have a few lads that we know well.
Q:HOW DISAPPOINTING WAS IT TO BECOME THE FIRST PREMIERSHIP VICTIMS OF DERBY THIS SEASON?
A:It's one of those games that we're going to have to put behind us and move on. We didn't play anything like we should have done, but hopefully it's just a blip and we can still move forward. We put some pressure onto them but we weren't at the races from the word go. The most important thing is that we don't make this worse. We'll have to have a look at the video, analyse what we've done wrong and move on from there
Q:CAN YOU WRITE OFF THE PERFORMANCE AS 'ONE OF THOSE NIGHTS'?
A:We'll find out if it was one of those nights or not when we play the next game, but hopefully it was. We weren't at the races from the word go and we didn't do anything that we wanted to. Hopefully, we can put it behind us and move on. It's all we can do really.
Q:DO YOU THINK THAT YOU WERE UNFORTUNATE TO LOSE?
A:I don't think you can say we deserved to win. To be honest, I don't even think we deserved to get a point. They came at us and tried to spoil is, we gave them something to hold onto and they held onto it for the rest of the game. For us just to have one shot on target is very disappointing given the talent that we've got.
Q:WERE THERE ANY POSITIVES TO TAKE FROM THE DEFEAT AT PRIDE PARK?
A:I think the game was a bit of an embarrassment to be honest. No disrespect to Derby, but they're not one of the top guns. We didn't prove ourselves against them though and we've only got ourselves to blame for that. It's doubly disappointing because we started the season well and we could have got ourselves up at the top of the table if we had done well against Derby. It wasn't to be. We didn't play well enough to get any points so we have to congratulate them.
Q:CAN YOU PUT YOUR FINGER ON WHY NEWCASTLE DIDN'T PLAY TO THE BEST OF THEIR ABILITY?
A:You would think we would have had the players to have been able to cope with what Derby threw at us. We have enough quality to be able to handle a team that works hard against us and never lets up. We didn't do that though. I can't think of one player that played anywhere near the level that they are used to.
