Steve McClaren was forced to endure another miserable evening at the hands of Slaven Bilic as Newcastle slumped 2-0 at West Ham.
McClaren, who lost his job as England boss eight years ago after a Wembley defeat to Bilic's Croatia, saw his side shot down by two goals from Hammers new boy Dimitri Payet.
The night did not start well for the Toon, either, after they arrived late at the stadium having had to walk the last mile of the journey due to the heavy traffic.
They even asked for the kick-off to be put back in order to give them time to warm up sufficiently, but to no avail.
And they were caught cold at the start of each half as French star Payet fired West Ham to their first home win this season.
"We can make excuses and say the preparation wasn't ideal, but it's no excuse," said McClaren. "We felt the preparation wasn't long enough and asked the referee to put it back.
"But we didn't do tonight what we have done for the previous four games in terms of organisation, discipline and being hard to beat, we lacked that.
"We shot ourselves in the foot, especially for second goal.
"It's a learning process and we've learned a lot tonight. You don't like going through nights like tonight, it's painful, but sometimes you have to."
West Ham could sense Newcastle were there for the taking after just nine minutes when £10.5million summer signing Payet capped a sweeping move with a stunning opener.
Mark Noble collected Diafra Sakho's backheel in the penalty area and laid the ball back for the midfielder to coolly sidefoot a curling effort into the top corner.
Three minutes into the second half West Ham doubled their lead when Victor Moses was desperately unlucky not to mark an impressive first appearance with a goal.
The Chelsea loanee ran almost the length of the field following a Newcastle free-kick, only to crash his shot against the crossbar.
The ball bounced down and out towards the lurking Payet, who thumped it into an empty net to take his tally for the season to three.
"We fully deserved the three points, we were better from the start and we scored at the right time," said Bilic.
"It's small proof that we really did well in the transfer window. Payet is a player I wanted from the start.
"I've known him for a long time, he is one of those players who is not only a great player who scores goals and makes goals, but he also makes the players around him play better."
The Hammers are now up to fifth in the Premier League but Bilic added: " I didn't set targets in terms of finishing in the top 10.
"Our target is that we want a good team that can defend with numbers and can attack with numbers, a team who can keep the ball.
"If we succeed in that that should give us more points. But I don't know if we will be fifth, or 15th."