Under-fire Newcastle manager Alan Pardew tore into his players after a miserable first-half at Tottenham -- harsh words which, coupled with some inspired substitutions, led to an impressive comeback win.
This was set to be another bad day at the office for the struggling Magpies after Emmanuel Adebayor gave Spurs the lead in a one-sided performance at White Hart Lane. Victory looked straightforward for the north Londoners, only for half-time substitute Sammy Ameobi to deliver a sucker punch just seconds after the restart.
Remy Cabella, also brought on at the beginning of the second half, then provided the cross for Ayoze Perez to cap his first start for the club with what proved to be the winner, as Newcastle held firm to secure back-to-back wins, alleviating the pressure on Pardew.
"We were a bit unlucky because we lose Papiss [Cisse] just two hours before the game,'' the Newcastle boss said. "We'd worked all week thinking that he'd be fine so it was a bit of a shock to lose him. His knee was swollen today as a reaction to yesterday's training.
"So we had to go with Perez and I knew that probably wouldn't suit him but we needed to give it a go because of the way we'd worked all week. We were giving too much possession to Tottenham, too much space.
"We never made a challenge and we were fortunate to come in a 1-0, so I reminded them about the fundamentals of a Premier League game and we came out with a much stronger attitude. I thought (in the) second half, the players were magnificent.''
Pardew deserves credit for the half-time introductions of Ameobi and Cabella -- a move he said was down to offering a threat.
It clearly helped move Newcastle's performance up a level, as did his half-time 'team talk'.
"There were a few strong words,'' Pardew said. "We just said to them after, it's not nice as a manager to go in and bark out orders but sometimes it's necessary just to shake people up because we needed shaking up.''