ROY HODGSON staged a Melwood sit-down with his under-performing players yesterday to express his “anger” and his “sadness” at Saturday’s 3-1 defeat by Newcastle.

The Liverpool manager called a meeting of his players and staff where he expressed his dismay at the side’s “woeful” away record.

“I was saddened and certainly angry with our performance because in recent weeks we have shown we are capable of playing good football and we were looking like a very solid and strong unit,” Hodgson rapped after their sixth away defeat in nine matches this season.

“Even though we got back into the game against Newcastle and then had chances to go in front, because of our capitulation at the end I still wasn't happy with the performance.

“I don't think the level of performance was what I was expecting right from the first minute to the 90th minute. There were far too many poor performances and as a result that led to a poor team performance.

“We've had quite a long get-together with the team on that subject and everyone agreed with me that it was a performance way below our best and we can't afford those type of performances.

“We had a few right at the start of the season which put us on the back foot and then some good performances got us onto the front foot and that's where we have got to stay.

“We know we have to improve our performances away from home.

“There is an element of confidence, we can't deny that, but basically I don't think we've been strong enough physically and strong enough mentally away from home.

“If we are going to improve upon our woeful away record it will be because we have become more physically and mentally stronger.

“We have to adopt a harder core to our performance and make us harder to beat and then we won't concede the type of goals when all the opposition goalkeeper has to do is kick a long ball into the heart of our defence and then there's a goal chance.

“We have got to make certain we stop any vulnerability with that simplistic type of play.

“We have got to work hard on the training ground and to be fair to the players, even after a very long meeting today, a long post-match analysis and quite a lot of critical words aimed at the team's direction, out on the field they worked extremely hard and I think that's what will get us through bad periods in the long run.”