Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Newcastle United 3 Liverpool 3 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
THE etymology of the phrase “waiting for the other shoe to drop” is actually a little vague.
It is meant to come from boarding houses, when work boots would be taken off. The first would be loud but the second could be softer, could never come, hence the waiting.
Today, the first shoe dropped – Liverpool’s first-half performance. Some of us may have been wondering if that shoe may drop: a tough run hitting a robust team and a difficult ground.
The second shoe was softer. What happens at 2-3 happens precisely because it was 2-3. The second shoe dropped when Kelleher misses his punch and Fabian Schar fails to keep it alive by virtue of killing the move dead in forcing it over the line.
The first shoe was heavy. Liverpool were poor first half, but Newcastle were good. A lot of how you view this Liverpool performance will come down to your general Newcastle view and your general Newcastle view could be all over the map. After all, this is a team that is now on one win in the last 10 league games.
But I think they are good. Good at a lot of difficult things in football, less good at putting poorer sides to the sword, less good at converting hard-won advantages into scoreboard clarity. And in being good they hurt Liverpool in the first half.
Sandro Tonali was the first half’s best midfielder by a distance and Liverpool couldn’t come to terms with it. They had a sense of Liverpool wanting to turn into space and baited traps and sprung them. They had Anthony Gordon and Alexander Isak coiled and ready for action and they got the goal their efforts deserve.
There’s this problem that Liverpool have just made the English and European Champions look daft and here are Newcastle hurting them. But Newcastle arguably have eight or nine players good enough to start for a side with an interest in making the last eight of the Champions League and there they are, almost all on the pitch.
Since he has arrived, the manager has been clear eyed about this league and one way he has been clear eyed is how he has spoken of its depth in class. Tonight is the quintessential example.
Newcastle are better setup, better drilled, smarter and sharper than AC Milan or RB Leipzig, Liverpool’s pot one and pot two European away opponents this season. They have a better game plan for dealing with The Reds.
That shouldn’t come as a surprise to Slot or his team. This is the brief and this is the ground Arsenal and Manchester City have both failed to win on.
Second half, it is almost underlined – let’s rephrase: if Newcastle United had Mo Salah and not Jacob Murphy (who grafts and is well drilled), but every other player is the same for 90 minutes, what is the final scoreline? Think of that when you think of them.
And think of that when you think of us. Being frank, Salah wasn’t very good for Liverpool until he was absolutely outrageously brilliant.
He wasn’t having a 7/10 and then hit the heights. He was a 5/10. And then he was a 38. Then he was unplayable, capable of everything, anything. Then the game orbited his brilliance, allied to Curtis Jones and Trent Alexander-Arnold’s brilliance and Dominik Szoboszlai’s energy.
Liverpool weren’t fixed and Newcastle weren’t bowed, but the game was suddenly on a plane of existence that lesser mortals can’t live with.
Which brings us to the second shoe. The soft shoe. The referee gives a foul because he hasn’t given the one immediately before. Newcastle had a kitchen sink they could throw.
But ultimately the ball is there for Kelleher to punch. Because of the excellence, because of Kelleher’s first half save in the one on one, the second shoe isn’t the thudding sound of defeat. But it is the velvet punch of Liverpool getting what they deserve.
Make no mistake – Liverpool don’t deserve to win the game. Make no mistake – being one up as the game hits its final knockings means it is two points dropped. Make no mistake – shipping five across two away games is reason to be concerned. Because the next away game is, on its own merits, the most important of the season.
And perhaps now it also is contextually. Liverpool have built a lead and it is important it gets out of next weekend intact. We have offered encouragement. To Southampton. To Newcastle United. To Everton. And to the chasing pack.
It would be nice for that to have a hard stop by Saturday at 2.30pm. It’s a long season and a tough slog and nobody should have any illusions about that. But we remain top of any league you care to mention and only one side has managed to beat us all season. Make no mistake – nobody should be disheartened around the overall ambitions.
But we will need to be as cold and as hard as steel to get through Saturday and clatter into the rest of Advent. Put the shoes back on, the steel toe cap boots back on, and take no backward steps, Liverpool.
No backward steps now.
Neil
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