Eddie Howe said: 

"Absolutely delighted with the players and what they have given this week. It has been a really big week for us.

"We are just constantly trying to tweak things and trying to improve. There are a number of little things to upturn our form. 

"Our creative play has been back to what it has always been - free scoring and looking like we can create at any time."

On the hat-trick hero:

"There is no doubting his quality. We just needed to get the framework of the team right to give him the opportunity to score. He has really responded well.

"The goals today just show his class and coolness in front of goal. With his speed and his technical ability, he has a bit of everything.

"The plan is that Sandro (Tonali) plays a little bit deeper than Joe Willock and Bruno (Guimaraes), but they are still given a freedom to express themselves and move.

"It's getting that balance right between the freedom and the structure, and I think they got the balance perfect.

"There is no part of me or anyone at Newcastle that wants to let Alex go. He's part of our long-term plans. Personally, I don't see that being an issue.

"The way he took his chances today, he's got that coolness and composure in front of goal that very few other players have.

"When you add his other qualities into the mix, how quick and technically gifted he is, he's got it all.

"Early season, we weren't [getting him into the game] and weren't functioning particularly well for him. He plays a part in that as well, it is not one dimensional.

"We've seen in recent weeks the team functioning and performing better and giving him more ball around the box. Then it is about his natural ability taking over and he is playing with so much confidence now.

"I think we are seeing a return to his very best levels.  

"I’m surprised it’s taken him this long to get a hat-trick."

On Sandro Tonali:

"I thought Sandro was magnificent again at the heart of the team. He gave us a real stability and control.

"I could pick several players out who performed very well and that's when you know you've given a really good account of yourself."

On Bruno Guimaraes:

"I think Bruno's always been tactically very good. He's always been very good at the long distance runs that he does and he had those in his deeper positions as well.

"He's very good at nicking balls off people and breaking up play and that was key for the (second) goal that Alex scored.

"The big challenge, for any player that goes forward to press, is that they have to go the other way too. That’s a challenge for anybody, but considering it was the third game in a week, I thought that all of our attacking players did really well.

On the January transfer window: 

"The message is that we probably, at this moment in time, need to concentrate on the players that we do have and get the best out of them, rather than looking externally."

Kieran McKenna said:

"We have to take some lessons from it, for sure. We haven’t had many like that, we’ve been really, really competitive across the season and I’ve been saying that the group have been doing very, very well to be as competitive as we have been.

"We have to be close to 100% to be competitive in games and do all the right things, and we didn’t manage to do that today. We came up against a very good opponent, who were better than us today and the game ran away from us.

"The first goal, of course, it’s disappointing, but we’ve made a couple of mistakes in the goal and it can happen if you’re a team who starts on the front foot against a very, very good team.

"For me, the period going up to half-time, the 20 minutes going up to half-time, because after the goal, we were in the game, we were OK, we had plenty of opportunities on the ball, we got to good areas, we had some big chances and the game was pretty open.

"But I think the game started to get away from us at the mid-point of the first half and they were becoming a big, big, big threat and our game management, decisions, our defensive organisation, our defensive resilience, things that we’ve been excellent at this season and that we’ve leaned into in difficult times.

“We didn’t do them today and we allowed the game to be open, we allowed the game to be end to end and with the personnel that Newcastle had on the pitch and where we were at, that always suited them. We didn’t stem that flow and that’s part of the reason why the game went from 1-0 in the first half to 3-0 and really got away from us.

"I think we needed to manage that period of the game very, very differently and make sure that we got to half-time at 1-0 down and gave ourselves a chance to attack the second half.

On Alexander Isak:

"He’s a very good striker, we’ve faced plenty of good strikers this year but he’s of a very high level and everything that we thought Newcastle were and that everybody knows they are at their best, they showed today.

“They’ve got an incredible athleticism, incredible pace, not just in the frontline but at full-back and in midfield. They’ve got incredible athleticism and they managed to open us up today and we didn’t manage the game well enough when it was open to close it up.

"We’re missing important players at the moment and that’s challenge for our squad. 

"Of course, everyone misses players but we’re missing some big players and today we were missing, in terms of physicality in our squad, we were missing our most physical player against maybe the most physical team in the league, certainly right up there in the top three."