Newcastle United defender Dan Burn says his side need to be “more ugly” in the way they play and take inspiration from league leaders Arsenal.
Eddie Howe’s team suffered a 3-1 Premier League defeat against West Ham at London Stadium on Sunday as the struggling Hammers secured their first home win in nearly nine months.
Newcastle have not won an away league game since April and Burn says his side’s issues on the road have been a huge “frustration”.
“It comes down to mentality,” he said. “The manager will look at that and I’m sure he will come up with a plan on what we can do better and how we can win games, probably be a bit more ugly with stuff.
“We were well known a few years ago for – I won’t say the word but ‘something housery’ – and a lot of the stuff that has come in has pushed us away from that.
“But if you go away from home, sometimes, it’s important not to get beat, pick up points and keep yourself ticking along. As long as you’re winning your home games, and not getting beat away, it’s better but we have not done that well enough.”
Newcastle have won their past four home games in all competitions and will be favourites when they face Athletic Club in the Champions League at St James’ Park on Wednesday.
But Burn warned the subsequent trip to Brentford on Sunday is “where you need to earn your money”.
“The first year we were in the Champions League, we were more of an underdog and teams probably didn’t respect us as much as they should,” he added.
“We could go ugly and bully teams and that was the way we went about it but as you progress and want to push on, you move away from that because you bring in better quality players and play better football. But there’s always a place for that in the game.
“Arsenal are quite good at doing that, but are playing very good football and are top of the league.
“It’s important you mix things up but sometimes, especially on Sunday, we have been a little bit too nice when we could have been a bit more compact and resilient.”