Newcastle showed the rest of the Premier League a very obvious route to success against Liverpool, but they don’t have Mohamed Salah.
We went one game too early when we suggested reliance on Ibrahima Konate this season might be a problem for Liverpool against Manchester City. Joe Gomez cruised through his first start at centre-back for over a year while Jarell Quansah dealt admirably with the troublesome Jeremy Doku from the bench. The Real Quiz came against Newcastle.
The smart money would have been on Quansah to start alongside Van Dijk – as was the plan at the start of the season before the academy graduate was taken off at half-time on the opening day – but emboldened by their displays against the champions, Arne Slot stuck with Gomez to Van Dijk’s right and Quansah to the right of him.
Neither looked comfortable in those positions, against a Newcastle side that showed the 18 improper teams Liverpool have beaten so far this season what we would suggest is a pretty obvious route to success against the league leaders: don’t give them time on the ball.
Ryan Gravenberch, so wonderfully poised and effective in possession this season, was rushed and didn’t like it. Alexis Mac Allister had a couple of excellent efforts on goal within a minute but was similarly badgered on the ball and failed to dictate the pace of the game as he usually does.
There was a general angst that we’ve not seen from Liverpool this season, with Bruno Guimaraes, Joelinton and Sandro Tonali winning the midfield battle, particularly in the first half, while Anthony Gordon and Alexander Isak caused significant problems for the disordered backline.
Isak was brilliant throughout, stretching the Liverpool defence but also acting as Newcastle’s chief playmaker, finding all manner of angles with passes the best No.10s wouldn’t even have seen let alone had the ability to play with such unerring accuracy.
The Ball Stayed Ball as he smashed Newcastle into the lead, taking one touch to get a yard to the side of Van Dijk before unleashing into the roof of the net after Guimaraes showed quick feet to dance past Mac Allister in the build up.
Gomez then nearly gifted Newcastle a goal as he failed to get anywhere near enough on a back pass, saved only by a terribly weak effort by Gordon straight at Caoimhin Kelleher. But in what we assume was a concerted effort to humiliate from all of the players after our esteemed editor’s ‘gone to sh*t’ feature earlier in the day, Gordon did get his goal in the second half.
Gomez was hooked soon after the England international very predictably cut inside on his right and caught the Liverpool defender horribly off balance before forcing the ball beyond Kelleher, with Trent Alexander-Arnold brought on in his place to turn the game on its head.
Mohamed Salah had already provided a delightful outside-of-the-boot assist for Curtis Jones before scoring a brace to add to his ridiculous all-round statistics and take him ahead of Erling Haaland at the top of the goalscoring charts this season.
The first was an instinctive one touch finish into the far corner while the second saw him kill the ball with his right, swivel and fire home with his left. Having barely been involved in the first half, in the second he got a wonderful assist, two brilliant goals and also hit the bar with a shot that would have been the best of the lot had it been a couple of inches lower.
If we had to rank the performances of all of the players on the pitch, Newcastle may well have had their XI in positions two to twelve (though Alexander-Arnold would probably be in among them somewhere), but Salah managed to haul his side to a draw courtesy of him being the best of the lot by such a massive margin.
It’s the sort of performance from an individual that feels unfair. Newcastle certainly didn’t deserve to lose this game and an xG of 1.97 to Liverpool’s 1.69 suggests that if anything they should have come away with all three points. It felt like justice was served as Fabian Schar miraculously diverted Guimaraes’ cross from an absurdly tight angle while Kelleher flapped in the 90th minute to cap a classic Barclays game on a classic Barclays night of Premier League action.
It’s a game that clearly showed Liverpool’s fallibility on a night when Man City got some of their sh*t together, Arsenal sorted out Man United via the inevitability of their set-pieces and Chelsea did a number on Southampton. Liverpool’s backups weren’t great, but neither were the lauded stalwarts like Gravenberch, who looked understandably knackered having played every minute of every Premier League and Champions League game before being taken off with 20 minutes to play here. Slot’s been averse to rotation, but this may well be a game to change his mind.
Because Newcastle gave them a real scare, and if it not for the astonishing brilliance and inevitability of one ludicrous footballer in Mohamed Salah, they would have left St James’ Park with nothing, without the right to complain about it.
The Kyiv IndependentChris York
