Wembley is Black and White as Reds suffer Carabao Cup Final heartbreak
Liverpool 1 Newcastle United 2, 16th March 2025
LIVERPOOL 1 (Chiesa 90+4)
NEWCASTLE UNITED 2 (Burn 45, Isak 52)
A wise old sage once said that time is a great healer but less than 24 hours simply won’t cut it, so let’s rip the band aid clean off in a fit of pique and admit that Newcastle, and the tactics employed by their manager Eddie Howe, were magnificent, dominant and fully, fully deserving of their Wembley triumph yesterday, and Liverpool were flat out awful. Two shots on target across 100 minutes of a Wembley Final, both from substitutes and the second of which resulted in a consolation goal deep into injury time, isn’t going to win you many games of football let alone a Final, and that’s all she wrote from a Liverpool perspective. If we left this here this would result in the shortest match report I’ve ever penned on the Mighty Reds, so let’s plumb the depths of self-inflicted despair and see where this particular rollercoaster will take us shall we?
To paint you a picture you probably don’t need in your life right now, whenever I watch the Reds play I divide a page in my trusty notebook with an orange highlight pen for the Reds (always on the left) and their opposition (unsurprisingly on the right) and my notes, always in red pen. Naturally. Diving into the dark heart of the matter at hand today, there is nothing whatsoever on the left hand side of my notes until Curtis Jones’ brilliant control and turn deep inside his own half of the field before continuing his run in the Reds first meaningful attack of the game and his eventual shot on target that forced a wonderful reactionary save from Nick Pope in the Newcastle goal on 58 minutes.
Nothing, of any note, for 58 minutes!
My notes on the Newcastle side of the Wembley Cup Final ball are copious, worrying, damning and an indictment of their supreme control of a game in which they were the heavy underdog but with fully 35 minutes still left to play, they were never in danger of losing. My notes state that for the opening 20 minutes Newcastle were by far the better team. More physical in winning every individual duel, with Tino Livramento particularly prominent in attacking the Reds enforced change at right-back Jarell Quansah, but they were winning every one-on-one battle across the field with their man-to-man marking and perhaps even more importantly, were often bypassing the Reds midfield by playing long balls into the wide channels for Harvey Barnes and Jacob Murphy and thus, whether individually or as a team, completely negating Liverpool’s desire to have the ball under calm, unpressured control. Newcastle were supremely dominant and simply not allowing Liverpool to play their own game and at the 20 minute mark my simple note of “no space to play” tells its own story.
My next notes spell out the danger that would lead to Newcastle’s first goal, but first I noted their captain Bruno Guimarães (and boy would I love to see this tenacious Brazilian in the Reds midfield) taking command of the game and forcing two reasonably simple saves from Reds goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher on 25 and 35 minutes, but the second of which came as a result of yet another corner for his dominant team and another knock-down header from his tall central defender Dan Burn. The danger signs were writ large and not just within my own written scribblings that Liverpool “have to get to half-time 0–0”, nor Gary Neville’s assertion (when not squealing with joy like a demented pig whenever Newcastle scored) that Alexis Mac Allister marking Dan Burn at every Newcastle corner was a clear mis-match and one stage stating that Burn, the giant at the top of his beanstalk compared to the much, much smaller Jack in the shape of Alexis Mac Allister, was looking at the Argentinian as though he was going to “eat” him!
The Reds hadn’t played for 45 minutes, at all, and HAD to get to half-time level. Dan Burn escaped the attentions of Mac Allister from yet another Newcastle corner and bulleted a header from long distance past the despairing dive of Caoimhin Kelleher, and the underdogs had a fully deserved half-time lead.
Still no notes on the Liverpool side of my written ledger despite a much brighter start to the second half, but for Newcastle? Another corner. More defensive mayhem from the Reds. A tap-in second goal from Alexander Isak on 50 minutes ruled out for offside but mere seconds later, another attacking run and cross from Tino Livramento, Jacob Murphy wins the knock-down header too easily over a flat-footed Andy Robertson, and Isak sweeps Newcastle into a 2–0, game winning lead. Finally some notes on the Reds as Arne Slot has to go for broke now, replacing Ibrahima Konaté, Alexis Mac Allister and Diogo Jota with Curtis Jones, a barely fit Cody Gakpo and Darwin Núñez, dropping Ryan Gravenberch into an unfamiliar centre of defence next to Virgil van Dijk, but aside from Jones’ lung bursting run and shot on 58 minutes, the only other note I made was Gravenberch’s substitution with 17 minutes to go as the Reds went into desperation mode with 3 men at the back and chasing a game already long since lost. Team changes. Formation changes. 4 strikers chasing lost causes. It mattered not and in actual fact and with all Red honesty, Alexander Isak should have killed the game completely on 63 minutes with a point blank volley that Caoimhin Kelleher somehow saved from nowhere, and where there should be a mountain of notes on the Reds going close or forcing corner after corner in wave upon wave of attack, there’s nothing of any note whatsoever and Newcastle cruised to their first domestic trophy in 70 years.
Post-game, social media was ablaze in proclamations that this was the worst performance from a Liverpool team in a major final since the FA Cup Finals of 1996 or 1988, but I’d go a year further back in time with their disappointing showing in the 1987 League Cup Final with the caveat that being a Liverpool Red affords you the luxury of having to delve into a deep and dusty memory bank for such disappointments. I’ve been to 9 major Finals in my lifetime and only departed from Wembley a loser on 2 occasions, and whilst that’s a small sample size I’d argue it’s also indicative of Liverpool’s unparalleled success and what a wondrous gift it’s been to my life to have been bathed in the Red faith. Yesterday was horrible, no positives whatsoever to glean in defeat, and they were defeated, thoroughly and completely, by the far, far better team.
My worry is tempered by the soothing fact they have a 12 point lead at the top of the Premier League with 9 games to go, but this team, like Jürgen Klopp’s a year ago, look dog tired and out on their feet. As I’ll repeat to the point of boredom, this is not a criticism of either manager and certainly not Arne Slot who, lest we all forget, has only been in the job for 9 months and the very fact they’ve only lost one Premier League game all season borders on the miraculous. The consensus within the murky waters of social media again suggests that the current international break will be good for an ailing team, but I disagree. Whilst this gives Slot a 2 week window to prepare his own thoughts and tactics for the Merseyside Derby with Everton, his tired players will now traipse around the world for pointless games (being a Liverpool fan I despise the national team and international breaks and roughly, in that order too) before returning to Liverpool hopefully uninjured and ready for the “9 Cup Finals” that will now define the Dutchman’s first season in charge. Where once there were fanciful daydreams of repeating Klopp’s trick in season 2021–2022 and playing and competing in every game and in every competition throughout the season, a second string Reds limped out of the FA Cup at Plymouth, were beaten on penalties, but still rather comprehensively, by Paris St Germain in the Champions League, and now Newcastle United in a painfully one-sided Carabao League Cup Final.
“9 Cup Finals” to go.
A 12 point lead in the Premier League that will almost certainly be down to 9 by the time they play Everton in 16 days time.
Still an unreal position to be in after a change in manager and only one addition to Klopp’s squad in the summer.
Where once I saw Arne Slot’s team cruising to the title I now see a squad stretched thin and out on their feet.
Wins at Anfield in these Cup Finals wins the League, starting with Everton.
See you after the tedious international break.
Arne’s Afterword
“Disappointing result, disappointing performance. So, completely different than I felt after the Paris Saint-Germain game. Losing twice in a row is something I think we do for the first time. But that probably also comes with going into the latter stages of a tournament, so facing Paris Saint-Germain and Newcastle in a final are two very good teams, both in their own styles. But very difficult teams to face, because we already knew from the game at St. James’ Park how difficult it is to beat them”.
“We were outplayed in their style, yeah, that’s true. That is what you can call outplayed. Yeah, they won more duels than us. Is that what you mean? Is that outworking? Or is that one of their biggest qualities to play so much aerial duels and to win these physique duels? Outplayed for me is if you don’t touch the ball and they play through you every single time we tried to press them, every time you’re too late. That is for me outplayed. But I agree with you if you say that they deserved to win because the game went in the way they wanted it to go. Yes, they deserved to win, but it wasn’t like we were only running after them. We had to defend a lot of long balls, second balls and that’s their strength”.
Thanks for reading. I pen my thoughts on every Liverpool game and in recent seasons, with the addition of numerous pieces of retro writing on Reds games of the past, I’ve curated and created the following two self-published books:
"A final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" - link to Amazon
Whilst you’re here I may as well brag about the release of my trilogy of recently self-published books too. Beautiful covers eh! As the title(s) would suggest, this is my life at the movies or at least from 1980 to 2024, and in volume 1 you’ll find 80 spoiler free appraisals of movies from debut filmmakers, 91 of the very best films appraised with love and absent of spoilers from 1990–2024 in volume 2, and in volume 3 you’ll find career “specials” on Paul Thomas Anderson and Quentin Tarantino together with the very best of the rest and another 87 spoiler free film reviews from 2001–2024.
All available in hardback and paperback and here are some handy links:
"A Life at the Movies Vol.1" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.2" - link to Amazon
"A Life at the Movies Vol.3" - link to Amazon