Eddie Howe questions squad depth at Newcastle United – admits he was looking beyond Sheffield Wednesday

The Magpies – the richest club in the world who showcased nine full internationals on the night and left one on the bench – lost 2-1 live on BBC One as Josh Windass’ double did the business for League One Sheffield Wednesday.

And Howe admitted he had one eye on matches beyond the third round tie in making eight changes in pursuit of their first major trophy since 1955.

“We are aware that we don’t have the deepest squad of any team in the Premier League, we are low on numbers but we feel high on quality,” he said.

“Injuries will dictate how stretched you feel. We gave an opportunity to a lot of players that haven’t played a lot of minutes this season, I thought there were positives and negatives within their performances.

“You pick your team looking ahead to future games. We have a very quick turnaround, late kick-off today and then Leicester on Tuesday [in the Carabao Cup]. I thought it would be unwise of me to pick the same team for this game and Leicester as well.”

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There was praise for Owls stopper Cameron Dawson from Howe, who admitted disappointment in the quality of his players’ finishing on a night Chris Wood missed a sitter at 2-1.

“It was a disappointing result for us, I thought we gave it our all until the end, we created chances to score and we didn’t take them,” he said.

“Their goalkeeper played very well, it was always going to be a difficult game coming here, we needed to get our noses in front and we didn’t and that made it very difficult.

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“We were desperate to win the game and I picked a team that I thought was strong enough to do that at the start of the match and the moments and chances were there for us in the first half to take the lead, we just weren’t clinical in front of goal and that remained all the way through the second half as well.”