Newcastle went 1-0 up against Nuno Espirito Santo’s struggling West Ham side after just four minutes thanks to a goal from Jacob Murphy.
A strike from Lucas Paqueta and an own goal from Sven Botman earned a surprise lead for West Ham just before half-time, with Tomas Soucek securing victory in the 97th minute.
Howe’s side are now down in 13th, with three wins, three draws, and four defeats from their opening ten Premier League games.
Speaking after the game, Howe was unable to suppress his frustration: “The dynamism wasn’t there today,” said Howe. “The physicality, the energy was missing from our performance. Hugely frustrating for us. A poor performance. We weren’t ourselves today.
“The numbers aren’t good in terms of our away form recently. We haven’t replicated our home form away but I think some of the performances have been good.
“But that’s the worse we’ve played during that run of games where we haven’t won.
“It didn’t look like a Newcastle team that we’ve seen in recent seasons. I think the body language, the collective spirit on the pitch, loads of little things that contribute to our performance weren’t there.
“The longer that first half went on, the more frustrated I was with our performance. We were unrecognisable in certain aspects of our game.
“I don’t think that was tactical and I don’t think that was necessarily technical. It was a byproduct of us just not being where we needed to be mentally.”