Roberto de Zerbi spoke about another defeat for Tottenham at the start of the season.
'I'm really happy to see improvement'
Spurs were smashed 3-0 by Brentford on the opening matchday of the Premier League season.
They needed a response in their first fixture of the campaign on home soil, hoping that the presence of full debutants Omar Marmoush and Mateus Fernandes would make a difference to the outcome.
But at the final count, Newcastle United weathered the storm and turned their moments into the key contributions, scoring twice in the second half with strikes from Anthony Elanga and Yoane Wissa.
De Zerbi on his players' qualities
"I have big confidence in the qualities of my players. At the end, when we become a team, when we improve the connection between the players, when we improve the quality of the play, when we improve the defensive space, distances between the attackers, defenders, midfielders, when we create a team, this group, with me or with another coach, nothing changes, because they are good players.
"I'm sorry for the club, because anyway they are building a great squad, but maybe now we are not ready yet, for many, many reasons. We are not ready yet, for many reasons, but today, I think, until the first goal, we played better than Newcastle.
"Newcastle is a good team, good coach, good player, good everything, but we created more chances to score, we shot more times, we had the control of the ball more than Newcastle. We suffered too much in two or three situations in the first half, because the distance between the attackers and defenders was too big, too much space, and then after the goal we conceded, we lost the confidence.
The reaction was not good enough
"The reaction was not good enough, not the reaction I want to see on the pitch, and I said after the end of the game, the players, because when you build something new, it's tough, there are problems, the difference is how you want to find the solution of these problems, and the solution is not to put down the head, but to react, because we had 20 minutes to score one, two or maybe three goals."