COVENTRY City boss Chris Coleman said the scoreline of the Sky Blues 4-1 defeat to Newcastle United at St James' Park hid a different game.

City took the lead against the automatic promotion contenders through Clinton Morrison with his tenth goal on his 500th professional appearance.

But Wayne Routledge levelled for the hosts before the break and a strike from Andy Carrroll, a Peter Lovenkrands penalty after a red card for Leon Barnett, and a late fourth from substitute Ryan Taylor compounded a disappointing night for Coleman's side.

"We had plenty about us in the first half and we deserved our goal to go ahead and maybe if we had gone into half time a goal up it would have been a different game," he said.

"We just switched off for the second goal and you cannot do that against teams like Newcastle because they will punish you.

"That being said I thought we had plenty of endeavour about us and I think the scoreline was a bit deceptive.

"We have to see now if we can pick ourselves up for the weekend because the lads have been magnificemt recently.

"It will say alot about us if we can go to somewhere tough like Selhurst Park on Saturday and come away with a result against Crystal Palace."