Newcastle boss Alan Pardew insists 'the bubble has not burst' after the Canaries inflicted a third league defeat in four to check their early season Premier League momentum.

Pardew endured an uncomfortable afternoon at Carrow Road as his makeshift backline was mauled by Grant Holt and Steve Morison.

Demba Ba's clinical brace kept the Magpies in it despite playing the final 25 minutes with 10 men after Dan Gosling's rash lunge on Russell Martin earned the young midfielder a straight red card.

Pardew's side now entertain Swansea and West Brom back-to-back at St James' Park and the Magpies' boss expects to have some of his big hitters back from injury to get the club upwardly mobile again.

'You have to remember where we are. We have done tremendously,' he said. 'We went down to 10 men and we were still in the game.

'I'm sure when you lose a couple of games there is going to be a sense that the bubble has burst but that is a little bit harsh. I think every game is big for us. We got ourselves in a nice situation with a points tally, but we have come into a run of top teams and lost big players to injury.

'We're just really struggling, not so much with the fixtures but with the personnel and losing players to injury. I know that within that group once we got those players back we will be a very good side.

'I think (Fabricio) Coloccini has a very good chance for next weekend. He was touch and go here, but we couldn't risk it. (Mike) Williamson is going to play in the reserves and Cheik Tiote will be back hopefully and he'll make a big difference for us.'

Pardew was forced to field an untried centre back pairing in James Perch and Danny Simpson who failed miserably to deal with Norwich's potent threat from set pieces.

'Whatever side you pick as Newcastle manager you don't expect to concede three set plays, and that has cost us today,' he said.

'We knew a clean sheet might have been beyond us with the personnel we had available, so we had to threaten their goal, which we did all day today. And two goals should be enough to take something away from here.

'They are buoyed by the fact that we haven't got our two first-choice centre-backs, and three missing in total. Any team in the Premier League is going to struggle with that, even Manchester United if they had (Nemanja) Vidic, (Rio) Ferdinand and (Chris) Smalling out of the side.

'It's never going to be quite the same. We should have been a bit more competitive when that ball was delivered – regardless of the centre half issue.

'Of course, when a team is losing centre halves it gives the other side a lift and perhaps there was more venom in how they attacked the set plays.'

Pardew had no argument with Gosling's red card and after his recent criticism of the officials in Newcastle's previous defeat to Chelsea the Newcastle boss took a pragmatic approach to a contentious dead ball incident in the lead up to Norwich's opener.

'Tim (Krul) hasn't taken the ball anywhere. He has just caught it exactly where it landed so it must have been a goal kick,' said Pardew. 'I was a wee bit disappointed with that.

'It's decisions that go your way and don't that are difficult to take, but even with that decision we could still have prevented the goal because they have obviously got to score from the corner, which they did. It's the big decisions, penalties and sending offs, that change games.

'He (Gosling) has put himself at risk because he is late. He's not gone to hurt the player, there's no way of that. It's not studs up to make a mark on him. He's just late and maybe a bit na�ve there. There were a couple of periods where I thought we were in a good position, but the sending-off altered it all completely.'