1 good, 3 bad from Liverpool 4-1 Newcastle

Enter Dr. Newcastle to give Liverpool a shot in the arm, as two calamitous defensive errors surrendered our hard-fought lead, before they took charge in a second half where we basically rolled over and let our bellies be tickled.

Here is one good and three bad from the game:

Good: The opening 35 minutes

United were excellent for the first 35 minutes: controlled the game, made the better chances, and should’ve scored more than the one we did. We rightly took the lead through Anthony Gordon’s first open play goal in over a year, and it was a peach of a finish low across Alisson after an incisive counterattack.

Barnes had earlier hit the post from a well worked freekick that was just inches from finding the back of the net, and Willock picked up where he left off against PSG with some powerful running from deep.

Howe made some big changes to the starting lineup which were hotly debated online pre-match again, but for large periods of the first half it looked like he’d got it completely right. We deserved to be more than one up before what happened next, but what did happen next was akin to a waking nightmare… 

Bad: Defensive mistakes

Liverpool’s two quick goals late in the first half came from two shocking defensive mistakes. The sight of Trippier down on his haunches as Ekitike prodded the ball past Pope for the first was emblematic of a 35-year-old fullback being on his last legs as he just couldn’t recover to block the ball back across, but with Livramento injured and Miley needing a rest we just don’t have another option.

Malick Thiaw has been excellent since signing, but he is now suffering and making mistakes through the virtue of playing 500 games in a row. Yes, he had to cover a runner, but to not close down the dangerman with the ball, opening another angle for Ekitike to finish, smacked of mental tiredness. The lad really needs a rest, but again, we just don’t have any other options.

Pope then dropped a clanger for the fourth, but the game was already done by that point, but it was a calamitous mistake from the keeper to allow such a soft goal and pad Liverpool’s stats.

Bad: Not making subs until they’d scored a third

Despite the two quick goals that ruined our excellent first half performance, we had a measure of control at the start of the second half, but the lads looked spent (especially Trippier, Willock, Ramsey, Barnes, and Hall) and we had the opportunity to make changes to counter this, but for whatever reason, Howe and the coaching staff are unable to make proactive changes, and appear to have to wait until beyond the 68^thminute before they use the bench.

It’s almost like Howe doesn’t see substitutions as an effective way to change the game such is his reluctance to make them. By the time they were made, we were 3-1 down, and the game was pretty much done, and then the subs look even more ineffective because you’re basically up against a wall awaiting a firing squad.

Bad: A horrid result against an average Liverpool side

It’s even more galling that we’ve ended up on the end of a 4-1 defeat against such an average Liverpool side. In years gone by they’ve been an excellent side who have wonderful players playing a brand of football that can be devastating, and to lose to them so comprehensively, when we could barely put out sides beyond Championship level for years came as no surprise.

This Liverpool side is not that; they’ve struggled to get results against Fulham, Burnley, Sunderland, Wolves, Leeds, and Bouremouth in recent weeks; they’ve struggled against five at the back, low blocks, and are a shadow of the side they used to be. But Newcastle just fell to pieces, as if the players and coaches, started thinking about our god-awful record at Anfield, panicked and capitulated. How many other sides have 30-plus year records of not winning at certain grounds, and why can’t Newcastle just put these sorts of records to bed like other sides seem to do year after the year. It’s honking and it needs to stop if we are to go anywhere.

This season, for whatever reason, it just seems that if we go ahead in games, we become the oppositions best player, or we switch off, or drop a clanger, and we just can’t see games out from winning positions or come back from losing positions, and that is a combination that just screams midtable.

We move onto the Etihad for the League Cup semi-final 2^nd leg needing to score two goals without reply against a side who are infinitely better than Liverpool. Stranger things have happened of course, but if we fall apart like that on Wednesday, it could be a bloodbath.

Keep the faith. HWTL