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Newcastle 1 Liverpool 3 (Jul 26 2020)

     

     
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    Dave Usher

What a nice way to finish. You have to give this team massive credit for being able to dominate a potentially tricky game like this when there was nothing really at stake. 

 

I’m not saying it was a vintage performance by any means but they completely strangled the life out of Newcastle. Apart from their goal did they even get near our box? I don’t actually remember Alisson having to do anything. Just complete and utter dominance of the ball and the only thing that saved the Geordies from a cricket score was Klopp’s initial team selection.

 

With the front three all left on the bench it was always going to be difficult for us in the final third. We know how big the drop off is to the replacements so what we saw in the first half was hardly surprising. It was also completely understandable as I don’t think those three have ever played together before, have they? Maybe in the cup.

 

The task was made a lot tougher by the way we were caught napping in the first minute and fell behind. Schoolboy stuff that.

 

That’s the last thing you need against a team that only wants to sit in and frustrate. You give them a led to protect and it could be a long day. For a while it looked like it would be but by the end Newcastle were probably relieved to have only lost 3-1.

 

The opening goal was just daft and I just can’t ever envisage that happening if there was something riding on the game. It goes back to what I’ve been saying ever since the title was won. There’s no lack of effort, *Brendan Rodgers voice* they've just lost that wee bit of focus.

 

That goal was a perfect example of it. Van Dijk commits a sloppy foul and then throws the ball back towards the direction of where the free-kick would be taken. He didn’t throw it straight to Shelvey though because he wanted to get back into position.

 

Gini catches the ball, which he shouldn’t have done. Then he gives it straight to Shelvey, which again, he just shouldn’t be doing. Let them get the ball themselves. Don’t be helping them catch us flat footed. You’re not a fucking ballboy, Gini! 

 

This is basic stuff. It’s why players will often stand over the ball to prevent quick free-kicks being taken. Funnily enough, thinking about it, I can’t really ever remember our lads standing over a free-kick. Robbo and Milner would probably do it but I’m not sure any of the others would. 

 

I’m not saying they haven’t done it but I can’t recall it. Not really our style is it? It happens to us all the time though, because most managers drill it into their players.

 

I’m not saying Klopp should do that as we’ve done pretty well so far doing it our own way. But there’s good sportsmanship and then there is having our players fetch the ball and give it to the opposition to take a quick free-kick! Too much, Gini. Too much.

 

The biggest problem was probably how early in the game it happened. We just weren’t switched on yet. Gini isn’t thinking and the back four just weren’t expecting what followed. 

 

Credit to Gayle and Shelvey for their quick thinking but Gomez was half asleep and Williams had dropped a fraction deeper than the rest, apparently playing Gayle onside.

 

I say apparently because we only saw one angle of it and that wasn’t conclusive. What went on there? Seemed a bit weird to me. The VAR took over two minutes to give the goal but we didn’t see any replays or clips with the lines on or anything. Did something malfunction? Was that why it took two minutes, because they were trying to get it working?

 

It looked extremely tight and while in theory I’m more than happy for attackers to get the benefit when it’s that close, something just didn’t feel right about this did it? Has this happened before where we didn’t get to see the freeze-frame with the lines on it? 

 

No matter, the goal was given and we now had to come from behind with a front three of Ox, Origi and Minamino. I can’t say my expectations were especially high when I saw the team sheet and nothing I saw in the first hour makes me feel like I was overly harsh.

 

And yet, Ox had an assist and Big Div scored, so you could easily say I was wrong. It doesn’t feel that way though. I was still extremely frustrated watching Origi, and other than the run and cross for the equaliser I thought this was just standard “Ox on the wing” mediocrity.

 

The reason he plays there as often as he does can only be down to what he does without the ball. His pressing and the angles he makes when doing so and general positioning. All shit that I don’t really understand but the coaches look for. Because what the untrained eye sees when he plays on the wing just isn’t very good and you wouldn’t select him based solely on that. 

 

It’s not even his fault so don’t take this as a criticism of Ox. I like him. Just not in the front three. He’s a completely different type of player to Salah and Mané. He wants to go outside and cross, they want go inside and shoot. I’d have liked to see Shaqiri given a run out (or even young Harvey), and the fact he wasn’t leads me to believe he may well be sacrificed this summer to bring in funds.

 

Minamino is a totally different player to Salah and Mané. He’s much more similar to Bobby than the other two, yet he started the game on the left. I can’t complain too much about that given how often I’ve complained at Div not being given a chance in the middle.

 

I thought Minamino did alright actually, especially after he switched with Origi. He was involved a lot and had a couple of shots from the edge of the box. It’s not been easy for him so far for a lot of reasons, one of which is that he’s never had a chance in his best position with Salah and Mané either side of him. 

 

So it’s hard for Ox and Minamino and to a lesser extent Origi, but the fact is when any of these players come in the whole dynamic of the forward line changes. When all three of them are starting it’s always going to be difficult, especially for them. 

 

Divock though. He drives me mad. He should be so much better than he is and in theory he should be able to play any of the positions in the three and play them well. And occasionally he has. Just not very often.

 

In this game he’d done the square root of fuck all until out of nowhere he scored a trademark Origi goal. One thing I have to say about Div is he’s a really good finisher. It’s not like he misses many chances is it? 

 

He’s clinical as fuck actually, it’s all the other stuff that has me tearing my hair out. Thankfully I have plenty of it otherwise I’d be looking like Uncle Fester, especially this season. Derby Divock is great. Regular Divock just leaves me perplexed. 

 

Maybe I’m just expecting too much. I don’t want a massive drop off from the first choice three and that impacts on how I judge the replacements. They played their part in this win so I feel like I should be praising rather than criticising. But look at how different we were when the big three came on. It was night and day.

 

Nevertheless, that terrific goal from Div had put us ahead and Ox had contributed to us getting level, so credit is due I guess. Ox does this kind of thing a lot when he’s in midfield but not so much when he’s in the forward line. We’ve seen it loads, he just suddenly injects a bit of pace into the game and explodes past somebody. Usually it ends with a shot but because he was in a wide position this time he drove to the line and clipped a ball into the middle.

 

It wasn’t the greatest of crosses as Virgil couldn’t attack it. It was behind him so all he could do was get his head on it and try to direct it. And he did. What a header that was. I’ve seen a lot of people questioning whether he meant it, but that was the only way he could score. 

 

What else was he trying to do? He couldn’t power it in, the only thing he could do was try to get enough on it to loop it into the far corner.

 

That goal was key really as once we’d wiped out Newcastle’s lead this was only ever going one way, especially as we knew we had the big three to bring on. 

 

They had been waiting to get on a while but the ball wouldn’t go out of play so the other lads had a few more minutes than intended. It was 1-1 at that point and Div must have known he was getting hooked, but he lashed in a great goal and I’d probably have left him on for another five or ten minutes to see how it played out as he had a real spring in his step then. 

 

Ironic as I’d spent the previous five or ten minutes screaming for him to be taken off! I always hate myself for getting too down on Origi. He’s a top lad and I love him for the massive contribution he’s made. I’m rooting for him and badly want him to do well so when it doesn’t happen it’s so frustrating. 

 

If he was shit it’d be easy to just write him off and say get rid but he’s shown what he is capable of. That just makes it worse though when he isn’t doing himself justice. He frustrates me more than any player we’ve had since…. I don’t know actually. Luis Garcia maybe? Emile Heskey? Players who you know have it in them to be brilliant but just don’t produce it often enough.

 

The difference when the changes up front were made was massive. Mo hit the post within seconds of coming on and then ran clear on goal soon after (from a brilliant Firmino pass). He should have done better but as usual he tried to run around to get onto his left foot and the defender got back to make a block. Why does he do this??

 

I wrote about this in the last report because he did it in that game too. If he wasn’t so pre-occupied with getting onto his left foot and trying to bend it into the far corner he’d make life so much more difficult for the defenders. Of course there are times when this works, but more often than not he seems to get tackled because there isn’t enough time to do it.

 

Keep it on your right side and they can’t tackle without committing a foul. He just needs to have more faith in his right foot and less faith in his speed. He’s quick but he’s not THAT quick where he can afford to run around the ball to get onto his strong foot. You know who was quick enough to do that and did it all the time? Michael Owen. He was the master at it.

 

Then he lost a yard of pace and couldn’t do that anymore. So what did he do? He worked on his weaker foot and became proficient at finishing from that side too. Mo is a world class forward and he’s done as much as anybody to secure these trophies that we’ve won. I’m grateful to have him, he’s fucking great, but there’s still room for him to get even greater.

 

With Sadio I’m not sure we can say the same. What areas can he improve in? He’s just brilliant at everything and is probably at his peak right now. Can he get better? I don’t really see how. There’s not much between Sadio and Mo currently but if Salah improved his finishing (and there is plenty of room for that) then he’d be top dog like he was in his first season here.

 

Sadio curled one into the far corner in the last minute to get within one goal of Mo. He hasn’t taken any pens, although I’m not sure Mo has many either since the Premier League brought in that legislation that all the penalties Liverpool would have should now be awarded to Manchester United instead.

 

For the second season in a row Sadio and Mo have finished almost neck and neck. The only reason their tallies are so close is because Mo misses so many chances. Yet it’s his greatness that means he gets so many chances, which makes it hard to be too critical.

 

You could see how desperate Mo was to get goal number 20 but it was never going to happen was it? Not since I jinxed him the other week when I said I could see him going on a run and pipping Vardy for the Golden Boot. I don’t think he’s scored since. Me and big mouth.

 

In the end he finished with 19 Premier League goals, with Sadio on 18 and Bobby on 9. Is it just me or is that actually pretty underwhelming for those three? Sadio is roughly where I’d expect him to be but the other two should have more (25, 20 & 15 would be about par). Yet here we are, on 99 points and light years ahead of everyone else.

 

So maybe I’m becoming a little too fixated on these numbers. Man City scored over a hundred goals this season and their goal difference pisses all over ours. Where did it get them though? They’re the ultimate flat track bullies now, beating up on the likes of Watford and Brighton and racking up the goals in easy wins. It feels like they win 5-0 four games out of every five, but then they lose the fifth. They lost nine fucking games this season. 

 

Baldiola is the only manager in the world that could spend a billion pounds, lose nine games and still have everyone tonguing his balls as the best coach in the world. Anyone else would be getting pelters from the media. Gets away with murder that prick.

 

While City were losing nine games we’d only lost one right up until the point the league was won and then we got a little sloppy and dropped another couple (not sure I’ll ever not be pissed off about that Arsenal game!). So while ideally I’d like a few more goals from the front three it almost seems churlish to be pointing that out given everything we’ve achieved. 

 

What we’ve seen these last couple of years is unprecedented, not just in our history but in the history of English football. This is all time, historical stuff we’re witnessing right now. We’ve averaged 98 points, won a title and won a European Cup. Yes we’ve got the Super Cup and Club World Club too, which is nice, but you only get to play for those if you’ve taken care of the main business.

 

I don’t know if we can keep this up but Milner is the only player in the squad past his prime so in theory there’s no reason why it can’t continue a little while longer at least. And Milner was probably our best player in this game for me. Plenty of life left in that old dog yet.

 

At the other end of the age scale is young Neco, who was given a start at right back. It wasn’t his best game of the season by a long way. He got off to a bad start and it took him probably until the second half to really settle into the game.

 

That doesn’t concern me at all though. In fact it’s a good thing. Games like this speed up the development far more than coming in and playing great in a cup game. Neco will have learned more from this game, and the Brighton one, than he did in any of the others in which he excelled.

 

It’s all money in the bank ahead of next season and it’s for that reason I’d have liked to have seen more minutes for Jones too. And at least some for young Harvey, who has been on the bench in every game bar one since the restart but only got on the field once I think.

 

Williams and Jones are going to be important players next season. I’m not sure how many opportunities Harvey is going to get though, but he’s two years younger which is a lot at that age. To put in perspective how young Elliott is, he’s got six more years in which he’ll be eligible for the u23 side. For him to be as close as he is is quite the achievement really.

 

So that’s that then, the longest season of all time is finally over. Reaching 100 points would have been nice and you know how irritated I was when it became clear we wouldn’t do it, but now that its done and dusted and we ended on 99, I’m not as frustrated by that as I thought I would be. 

 

I’m not sure we’ll ever be in that situation again as what we did this year was probably once in a lifetime shit. What was it, 27 wins and one draw from our first 28 games? When you actually think about that now, looking back, it’s fucking nuts. At the time it didn’t feel that strange because we were living through it, but winning 27 out of 28 at the start of the season is something we’ll probably never see again from anybody.

 

Then we lost to Watford and soon after Covid hit and everything was on hold. We’ll never know what would have happened if we’d played right through but nothing will convince me that we wouldn’t have shattered the points record. Still, it is what it is and 99 points is nothing to be sniffed at like, especially as it bettered last season’s total which was inexplicably important to me.

 

I’m guessing it was important to the lads too given the way they bounced back from the Arsenal loss to win the final two games. The desire to win games and to never allow standards to slip is one of the main things that separates this team from the rest, and to be able to go to Newcastle and play like this on the final day, just a few days after the title celebrations, I just think it says it all about this squad.

 

Their standards won’t slip so for this success to not continue it’s going to take significant improvement from the chasing pack and some bad luck on the injury front from our side of things.

 

Star man is Milner, just ahead of Keita (good once again) and the imperious Van Dijk.

 

 

Team: Alisson; Williams (Alexander-Arnold), Gomez, Van Dijk, Robertson; Wijnaldum, Keita (Jones), Milner; Oxlade-Chamberlain (Salah), Origi (Firmino), Minamino (Mané):

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Such a shame we had that bizarre slip up against Arsenal or we probably would have finished on 102 points. 

 

Still, unbelievable season and more importantly we are back on our perch.

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The dropped points against Burnley actually frustrated me far more than the Arsenal loss. We could easily have been about 5 or 6 goals up before they equalised, and then there was the non-penalty when their defender just completely wiped Robertson out near the end.

 

But nice to finish with 2 more wins and the performances in both games were decent. I missed the first couple of minutes so didn't see the Newcastle goal, but agree that I can't remember them even having a shot on goal in the rest of the game. They stayed up comfortably enough and Steve Bruce has done a decent job with what he's had to work with, but from what I've seen of them this season they've looked like possibly the most tedious team in the whole league. You could make a case that if they'd tried to play more expansively against a team like Liverpool that they'd have risked a hammering, but they haven't seemed much more adventurous even when I've seen them play other midtable teams or sides battling relegation. It must have been a real chore for their supporters to watch them week in week out.

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I really get the thing about obsessively wanting to win more points than last season. I think it's in part so nobody could say Liverpool just stayed the same while City got worse/had an off season. Of course, we also scored more points than City did last season too, which feels somehow important. They may have scored more the season before that, but we weren't directly competing with them then. We have been this past two seasons, and we've been the high watermark in that period. Petty, yes. Unimportant when set against the overall goals and achievements now ticked off, yes. But, you want to win all these little head-to-heads and small points when you're battling neck and neck with another great side, and we've done that too.

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And, the only asterisk which should be placed against this season/our name, is the asterisk that everyone knows it would have been an even better points haul with more records broken without the long break for Covid.

 

Like asking someone to stop an Olympic event halfway round, wait 3 months then set off again. 

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I think they did use the lines to assess the Newcastle goal but the camera angle was far from ideal which, perhaps, makes drawing the lines difficult.

 

Fantastic season. But the Burnley result pisses me off; 19 home wins would have been sooo special and derailed by a bunch of alehousers.

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1 hour ago, Barnesey said:

I think they did use the lines to assess the Newcastle goal but the camera angle was far from ideal which, perhaps, makes drawing the lines difficult.

 

Fantastic season. But the Burnley result pisses me off; 19 home wins would have been sooo special and derailed by a bunch of alehousers.

That's the only one that pisses me off , not arsed about points.

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