Key events
Kevin Metcalf: “Why is it, with offsides now not necessarily being flagged on the pitch, that a goal resulting from an offside would (in theory) be disallowed, but a corner is not? Newcastle have just been allowed to gain a corner from a player receiving the ball in an offside position and this seems worse than before the advent of VAR.”
Richard McGahey: “Trippier and Diaz “clash?” Diaz high in the air, Trippier runs under him and undercuts him, pushing Diaz with his arm, again no attempt to play the ball.”
A bit worrying for Liverpool if their fans are already looking to officialdom. Their team has been poor so far.
Half-time: Liverpool 0-1 Newcastle
On the balance of play, and desire, Newcastle deserve their lead, and it came from a predictable source. Eddie Howe has been working on the set pieces and Liverpool’s defender allowed Dan Burn, the biggest man on the field, the aerial supremacy.
45+3 min: Salah – the superman – springs into action. But Diaz shanks wide. That’s it for the half.
45+2 min: Dec’s delighted. So is Spuggy, wherever she is. Donna Air, too. Newcastle’s is a deserved lead.
45+1 min: Trippier’s corner, Van Dijk and Konate nowhere near and Burn nods home. What a noise! Their first cup final goal since 1976 and Alan Gowling.
Goal! Liverpool 0-1 Newcastle (Big Dan Burn, 45+1)
The big man, from a corner….
44 min: Liverpool will be relieved when half-time comes. Their midfield is losing out. Perhaps Newcastle will have tied up after the break. Ian Rush, Kenny Dalglish and Steven Gerrard all seen in the crowd. Kenny managed both clubs and son Paul, beside him, was on the books of both,
42 min: Richard Hirst on 1974: “Oh John, how can it be before you were born. I remember when Supermac was playing for Fulham, as a left back! Before he went to Luton and onwards. If only he’d stayed at Fulham he might have become something.”
40 min: Did Trippier handball in the box? Looked it. VAR waves it away. Let it flow. “Arms out for balance,” says Stuart Atwell. That would have been harsh. Liverpool haven’t played well enough to get a helping hand like that.
39 min: Multiple clash of heads between Joelinton and Quansah, Szoboszlai too. All will be OK to continue.
38 min: Has Tripper twanged his hamstring? He’s rubbing it as if he has. The veteran has been throwing himself into anything.
36 min: Liverpool just can’t get going. Newcastle: can they keep this up? Lots of hacks clear as Liverpool clear their lines but then Pope comes from his box again. Watch out for that. Joelinton then muscles Quansah. Huge roars. “Geordies,” they sing.
35 min: Barnes on the burst. His ball is headed off Robertson and the rebound is smashed – off Robertson – and behind. From the corner, Trippier swings the ball in, Big Dan Burn climbs highest but Kelleher will not be beaten by that.
33 min: Tripper and Diaz clash. A warning to Tripper from Brooks that there will be no more of that. Beyond that, let it flow.
32 min: Toon corner. Trippier takes, Van Dijk powers it away. Big Dan Burn and Kelleher climb for the second ball. The keeper claims it.
30 min: Liverpool corner, smashed by Robertson, read by Joelinton at the near post. Next, Robertson, back at left-back, sends away Diaz, and Pope cleans out the ball. A foul? No, Diaz was offside in any case.
28 min: The face of Jason Tindall is pictured on Ant McPartlin’s scarf. Or is it Dec? It’s definitely Jase, hero of the Geordie nation.
27 min: Liverpool try to sit on the ball and Isak almost steals the ball. Quansah has to take evasive action. Salah has been quiet.
25 min: Konate has to hack behind but Murphy could have played it earlier to Isak. Liverpool reeling? They have to hurry away a corner after a Kelleher flap. The keeper eventually lies on the ball.
23 min: Newcastle the better team. Barnes sends Isak away, and Tonali gets the reverse pass, then shoots wide. No clear-cut chance yet.
21 min: Toon corner: Big Dan Burn and Schar go forward. It’s taken short and Isak can only foul. Ant and Dec pictured in the crowd but separately. Alan Shearer, too. No signs yet of Jimmy Nail, Sting or Spuggy.
19 min: A brief slowdown, but Newcastle still go long. Schar gets it launched Isak has been starved. They will hope this is not a Supermac 1974 when the great man hardly got a kick. (Yes, it was before I was born.)
17 min: Oof, a cruncher from Mac Allister on Joelinton. No booking? Let it flow, says the referee. Joelinton is hurt and making adjustments.
16 min: Liverpool a little shabby? Nigel Guest has suggestions: “As a Liverpool fan, I worry that Slot has run Salah and Gravenberch intothe ground, and to a lesser extent. MacAllister and Szoboszlai. I’m concerned about this match and the tail-end of the league, though I think we’re so far ahead we can’t lose.”
15 min: Huge tackle by Quansah on Livramento, and the ball spills to Murphy. A sight of goal? He saw too much glory. It flies way over the bar.
14 min: Salah’s pass is intercepted and Bruno is hacked down by Jota and Diaz. It’s frenetic stuff. More frenetic than Arne Slot would prefer.
13 min: Big Dan Burn – England man – goes long, too. Newcastle not holding the ball too well after that bright start. Bruno almost sends Barnes through. Tonali is robbed as he looks to drive play on.
11 min: Big Dan Burn leaves a mark on Mac Allister. Deliberately? Possibly? Heavily? Not really. Good physical stuff here, which Eddie Howe will be happy with.
10 min: Big Dan Burn squeezes out Salah to uproarious cheers. It’s all down one flank, that of Salah, Livramento, Barnes and Quansah. The posh seats get that view in the first half.
8 min: Mac Allister’s kick is poor. Nick Pope kicks the ball out of hand – more old-school stuff. The ghosts of Steve Ogrizovic and Martin Hodge are happy. Another long ball, by Liverpool, can’t be reached by Salah.
7 min: Robertson collides with Tripper and gets a foul awarded by referee Brooks. No yellow, it was barely a foul.
6 min: Free-kick taken short and Barnes skips to the byline and Liverpool clear behind hurriedly. Promising from Newcastle. Liverpool not at it. Nick Pope rushes out to hack clear.
5 min: Livramento speeds on the overlap, and Alexis Mac Allister chops him down.
3 min: Arne Slot has opted for the type of suit Bill Shankly would approve of. Quansah has to face down Harvey Barnes, not a bad replacement for Anthony Gordon. A pure footballer on his day, full of talent and speed.
2 min: Early Newcastle attack, Murphy down the right but the ball – aimed for Isak – is headed away. Diaz and Trippier take each other on. A key battle, surely.
1 min: That’s nine defeats at Wembley they need to overturn. Newcastle get it launched from a free-kick. Old-school, and welcome. Liverpool have some aerial work to get through.
Away we go at Wembley!
Liverpool take the kick-off. Can Newcastle overturn their hoodoo?
The players take to the field and the noise is deafening, drowning out the PA announcer and even Peter Drury seems muted. Carabao’s chief suits are being introduced to their players by Virgil van Dijk and Bruno Guimarães. Rick Parry, EFL chief, former Liverpool suit, is in the mix.
The national anthem – sung in X-Factor cursive style – booed by Liverpool fans, sung lustily by Geordies.
Eddie Howe also spoke to Sky: “We are so well supported and we want to do our supporters proud with our performance.
“Our preparation has been good. We played Monday [against West Ham] and then we have had a period of time to plan for the game. Our preparation has been consistent with how it normally would be. The players are aware of the size of the game.”
“The biggest change [since 2023] has been the hotel. Our hotel has been out of London. If anything we were absorbing supporters too early in our build-up [in the 2023 final].”
Travel Lodge or Premier Inn: much of muchness, right?
Another big miss for Newcastle will be Lewis Hall, who has made such strides this season at left-back. Tino Livramento has a huge task in replacing him. Mohamed Salah will be forever coming off his right.
Chris Paraskevas gets in touch: “G’Day John, Hope you’re well! This is the 2nd Cup Final of my 20+ years following this Ccu̶r̶s̶e̶d̶ club and this time around things feel a little different. For starters, last time I was drunk, dehydrated and dressed in a full magpie costume by 3am (bathroom visits were so awkward). Secondly, the air of resignation and trademark Doom-Spiral of our Cup Final approaches seems to have given way to some bizarre sense of calm.
“No-one is really expecting anything this time around and I hope the players can keep their emotions in check and please avoid previous Cup Final errors (emotional drainage, bird suits, too mch Guinness etc.) There is nothing to lose (other than immortalization, lifelong glory and the mood of an entire city) so just enjoy it!”
Patrick Crumlish gets in touch: “Honestly, John, not sure that if Gordon and Trent weren’t both playing, that Gordon wouldn’t just give TAA the run-around. Unless memory deceives, he won that duel in the December league match. Quansah should be solid today.”
Arne Slot had a chat with Sky Sports:
“I don’t think it means that much different with the formation, but it definitely is different if you have Trent who can play the ball wherever he wants to. Jarell [Quansah] is good at set-pieces and this is what we saw against PSG. Everyone brings their own quality, but we won’t play a different style because we miss out on a player.”
“[Newcastle will go all in, like they were at St. James’ Park. Letting us know that they are there. At Anfield they were waiting a bit more. At St. James’ Park they were constantly at us and that’s what you can expect in a final.”
“ If you work for Liverpool every game is important. I know it’s a final and it is special to be in this stadium. Looking forward to it, but the nine games that are coming are just as important.”
Konate is back for Liverpool, Kelleher will play in goal. Jarrell Quansah replaces Trent Alexander-Arnold. Jota leads the attack.
An unchanged team for Newcastle from their 1-0 at West Ham. How they will rue the absence of Anthony Gordon with Quansah replacing Trent.
The teams
Liverpool: Kelleher, Quansah, Konate, Van Dijk, Robertson, Mac Allister, Gravenberch, Szoboszlai, Diaz, Jota, Salah. Subs: Alisson, Endo, Nunez, Jones, Gakpo, Chiesa, Elliott, Tsimikas, McConnell
Newcastle: Pope, Trippier, Schar, Burn, Livramento, Guimaraes, Tonali, Joelinton, Murphy, Isak, Barnes. Subs: Dubravka, Wilson, Targett, Krafth, Osula, Willock, Longstaff, Miley, Neave.
In the Premier League today, important for Newcastle, this.
Full-time: Fulham 2-0 Tottenham. Marco Silva’s team up to eighth.
Look at the reception Newcastle players got in 1974 after *losing*. The same was true in 1976 when they lost the League Cup final in 1976 to Manchester City.
Bruno’s been a brilliant signing for Newcastle.
“Seventy years is too much to wait,” says Guimarães, who describes the meeting with Liverpool as “our World Cup final”. “Hopefully we can finally bring a trophy back to Newcastle.”
Is this Virgil’s last final for Liverpool?
“I enjoy playing, I enjoy leading the boys out, I enjoy being there for each and every one. I feel that responsibility even more than ever, maybe because I’m getting older slowly. I feel fine. We’ll see what happens in the future.”
A tale of two strikers?
The orthodox view of Núñez’s Liverpool career is that he is simply a poor fit for what Arne Slot is trying to do: a cat trapped in a grand piano, a maverick in a team seeking immaculate control, of emotions as well as the ball. Virtually all his metrics are significantly down from the Jürgen Klopp era: goals, expected goals, expected assists, key passes, dribbles, touches, shots and shots on target. This season Liverpool perform a goal a game worse when he is on the pitch than when he is not. A big Liverpool clearout is expected this summer and the word is they will listen to a serious offer for Núñez.
Isak’s teammates in Sweden’s squad, who should surely be challenging at the business end of tournaments with an attack that also includes Viktor Gyökeres and Dejan Kulusevski, report that he has noticeably hit fresh heights in the past year. “They also say he’s exactly the same person,” Gustafsson says. “His success has not changed him at all.”
Kevin Keegan spoke to Barney Ronay in 2012 about that Liverpool 3-0 Newcastle United game
That was a cup final between two big-supported teams so the atmosphere was unbelievable. Newcastle have a cup tradition that goes back to the 1950s and a lot of supporters remembered that back then in the 1970s. What I remember most was at the hotel Shanks just pinning up this article that Malcolm MacDonald had written [saying Newcastle were going to beat Liverpool]. No team talk, that was it, he just stuck it up and walked out. We felt like schoolkids going up to read what it said. It was a great piece of motivation. We were a club that didn’t shout out about what we were going to do, we just did it, so it was right against what we believed in. We were a very good side and it was a bit disrespectful to be honest. You could argue [MacDonald] was trying to motivate his team and being positive and upbeat. But Shanks used it very cleverly. It was one of the most one‑sided cup finals ever in the end. MacDonald had one shot from about 30 yards that flew miles over the bar, but I can’t remember Clem [Ray Clemence] having a save to make. With my goal, when I hit it I didn’t think it was going to go in, I thought the keeper would make a great save. In the end he pushed it into the corner, which probably made it look even better.
If Liverpool v Newcastle conjures up images of 4-3 Premiership matches of the 1990s, the clubs meeting at Wembley remind of one event only, 51 years, when Brucey – Forsyth, not Grobbelaar – held sway. And so did Kevin Keegan, for Liverpool, not Newcastle. The FA Cup final of 1974.
Preamble
Should you have been in London’s fashionable West End, you will almost certainly have heard an accent to remind of Vera, The Likely Lads or Byker Grove. Anyone shopping for some high-end pottery or handmade shoes in Covent Garden will certainly have heard the Geordie accent. To follow 2023, it’s another big day oot. Now, can it go better than the last time? They’re up against Liverpool, the holders. There will have been a few accents from Brookside, The Black Stuff and The Liver Birds but Liverpool are a trophy-collecting machine again. That said, there’s the scars of losing to PSG to cope with. Howay the lads? Or tears on Tyneside?
Kick-off is at 4.30pm join me.
