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Pardew plays down penalty row

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Alan Pardew insisted after the win over Norwich that he could understand why his players had wanted Papiss Cisse to take Newcastle's penalty.

Newcastle manager satisfied after narrow win over Norwich

Alan Pardew insisted after the win over Norwich that he could understand why his players had wanted Papiss Cisse to take Newcastle's penalty, even though he was not to happy when the striker missed. The Magpies edged out the Canaries 1-0 to pick up their second Premier League victory of the season, and Pardew believes the performance was nervy because it was so important to get a result. Demba Ba scored the crucial goal with a fine strike after 19 minutes, but Cisse is still to open his account this term after horribly missing a penalty on the stroke of half-time. "I thought the penalty miss hurt us mentally a little bit," Pardew told Sky Sports. "It was such an important game for us to win because, even though we had got some decent results this season, we needed that second win just to get us going. "We find ourselves with eight points and I think that is a good reflection because we have had some tough games. "Norwich made it tough for us today and the back four and the goalie were the standout players, outside of Hatem who was again brilliant."

Hurt

Hatem Ben Arfa had grabbed the ball when Newcastle won their penalty but the players decided to let Cisse take the spot-kick, leaving assistant manager John Carver to rebuke Ben Arfa. Pardew explained: "I think it was pretty obvious that they wanted Cisse to score, which says everything about our spirit here. "It's not really what I wanted. I want to see it in the back of the net and I want the best player to take it. "Papiss missed one in pre-season so I wasn't too pleased with that, but I can understand it and I didn't make a big deal about it at half-time because I thought that could hurt us even more."

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