Newcastle head coach Steve Bruce admitted the Premier League side were fortunate to squeeze past Sky Bet Championship Blackburn and into the Carabao Cup third round.
The Magpies head coach made 10 changes to the side which had won so impressively at West Ham in the league on Saturday and saw his under-studies labour to a hard-fought 1-0 win at St James’ Park courtesy of a debut goal from Ryan Fraser.
He said: “It’s fair to say – we’re not going to try to mask over it – I think we are fortunate to be in there.
“However, considering the problems with the team I put out with the lack of game-time and the two young ‘uns playing in the middle of the pitch, then it was always going to be a tricky tie.
“Blackburn are a very, very decent team. Tony always plays a certain way and I think he’ll count himself a bit unlucky tonight.”
Bruce said: “Considering he hasn’t played since March, I thought his effort and his endeavour and his enthusiasm were there for everybody to see.
“It was a great finish, great run great ball from Miggy and as I said, it was that little bit of quality, the only real bit of quality, that we showed all night.
“But hey, that’s the cup, that’s the way it is, but certainly we’ll be a lot better for the game.”
He said: “As I’ve always said, you have to find a way to win football matches. That’s the job, that’s where the team will grow in confidence – we have to win.
“It’s a bit sour, really, when you talk about how well we did and how many chances we had or how much possession we had and yet we were beaten.
“With total respect, Brucey has been in this game longer than I have, probably, and they didn’t look like they were interested in possession tonight.
“They were being solid and then they scored from the one break-away that they had, so it was a frustrating night for us.”
