Premier League: West Brom Alan Irvine boss bemoans lack of intensity in Newcastle defeat

West Brom boss Alan Irvine felt his side lacked intensity and tempo as they lost 2-0 to Newcastle at the Hawthorns.

Goals from Ayoze Perez and Fabricio Coloccini were enough to condemn West Brom to defeat and earn Newcastle their fourth successive Premier League victory.

Irvine had no complaints with the result feeling his side were far from their best throughout the 90 minutes.

"We lacked a bit of intensity at different times in the game," Irvine told Sky Sports. "We had little spells when we played at the tempo and passed the ball in the way we had worked on and the way we had hoped to do throughout the game, but we didn't do it for long enough and we needed to play with a bit more tempo, a bit more intensity.

"I thought we had started the second half fairly well without necessarily looking like scoring, but the second goal obviously came at a time when we had quite a lot of momentum and unfortunately that changed things around and gave Newcastle an even stronger position."

Irvine admitted West Brom could have defended the goals better, feeling both were avoidable.

Asked if his side could have done better at the back, Irvine said: "I suppose every coach will say that. There were mistakes, we made positional mistakes [for Perez's goal] you can't take away from the quality from Newcastle's point of view, but it was a goal we should have prevented.

"The ball [for the second goal] came in too easily, but at the same time we can't come out thinking that is the job done and again it was preventable."

Irvine conceded Saido Berahino had his worst performance of the season off the back of winning his first call-up to the England squad.

"It's probably the poorest he's played," added Irvine. "It has been a big week for the lad and obviously he is only young so that may have been a contributing factor, but anybody can play poorly and Saido has been really good for us this season he just wasn't today."