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Dan Burn opened the scoring in Newcastle United’s 2-1 victory over Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final.
Arne Slot has explained why Liverpool did not man-mark Dan Burn for Newcastle United’s opening goal in the Carabao Cup final loss.
The Reds deservedly suffered a 2-1 defeat by the Magpies at Wembley. Liverpool were outworked from the outset with Newcastle winning duels aplenty. It appeared the Reds would get to half-time unscathed - but Burn intervened. The Newcastle centre-back’s powerful headed opened the scoring a minute before the interval. The 6ft 7in defender was allowed plenty of space, with Alexis Mac Allister - almost a foot in height small - the nearest to Burn.
It left some scratching their heads why the former Brighton & Hove Albion man was given so much space. Speaking at his post-match press conference, Slot revealed why. The Anfield boss said: “Credit to Newcastle but I can explain. We play zonal. We have five players zonally close to our goal and it the ball falls there, it is always one of the five players going to attack the ball and we have three players that man-mark and Macca is one of them.
“Normally a player like Dan Burn runs to the zone because normally, and I think he is an exception because I have never seen in my life, a player from that far away heading a ball with so much force into the far corner.
“That is part of logic that either they have to go far away from our zone which 99 out of a 100 times will never lead to a goal or they have to arrive in our zone and then it's an equal level, if you call if like this. Credit to him, he is one of the few players who can score a goal from that distance with his head.”
Alexander Isak doubled Newcastle’s advantage shortly into the second half. While Federico Chiesa gave Liverpool a lifeline in stoppage-time, it was nowhere near enough and Slot’s men returned to Merseyside as runners-up.
It proved another blow to Liverpool’s season after they exited the Champions League at the hands of Paris Saint-Germain earlier this week. On the performance, Slot said: “Disappointing result, disappointing performance. Completely different to how I felt after the PSG game. Losing twice in a row is something we do for the first game but that also something to do with coming into the latter stages of the tournament.
“Facing PSG and Newcastle in the final, two very good teams in their own styles but very difficult teams to face. We already knew [that] from the game at St James’ Park how difficult it is to beat them, It was a tough week but also a week where we extended our lead [in the Premier League] to 12 points from 10 but maybe. It wasn’t all negative but the last two were definitely not what we wanted.”
Related topics:Arne SlotDan BurnNewcastle UnitedMagpies
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