Christian Atsu has in the wake of Newcastle United's EFL Cup penalty loss to Hull City declared that the best players in the world miss penalties’.
On Tuesday night United missed three of their four spot-kicks to go crashing out of the League Cup.
Shelvey’s was saved, Gayle missed the target and Gouffran’s was feeble as Atsu dipatched his expertly.
Coming off the bench, Christian Atsu ended up playing around 40 minutes as well as the penalty decider and must surely have put himself in line to start at Forest with a lively display.
The on-loan Chelsea player felt Newcastle played well and with more possession and chances, it was simply a game that slipped away, with now the focus having to be on Friday’s match and not what has already passed the team by.
Christian Atsu speaking to the official club website said:
“You can see that everyone is very disappointed with this loss, but we have to refocus now on the games ahead which are more important now than the one we’ve just played.
“We have a league game on Friday and we can’t be thinking about this (Hull) game. We have to concentrate on the game ahead. On Friday, we have to give everything and we have to react quickly.
“It’s so disappointing when you lose games like this but you have to react quickly. I think that after we lost at home to Blackburn, today we came here and played a very good game, unfortunately we lost a game we could have won.
“We now have to concentrate and react quickly in the next game against Nottingham Forest.
“It’s very, very disappointing because we could have won the game and then a lack of concentration (the Snodgrass goal). They got one chance and then they equalised. Penalties are just 50-50 and they won. We’re really disappointed.
“They had the red card then we scored, we knew that it would be difficult for them to score, but the chance that they got they scored. I thought we played a very good game, but the result was not the best for us.
“We had a lot of chances, even when it was 1-1. We created a lot of chances and we missed a lot of chances too. We had more possession than them, and we were just unfortunate that we lost the game.
“I think we were better than them. We created chances, we had more of the ball possession and we deserved to win the game but we lost, and that’s football.
“Anyone can miss penalties – the best players in the world miss penalties.
“We just have to look at the next game. It’s more important than the ones that are behind us. We have to concentrate on the future.”