This is the most important match of the season.
Last time out against Newcastle, I mocked Eddie Howe a bit. Truth is, I’ve never thought he was a bad manager, in general. He’s just a bad manager if you want to take a weak or mediocre Premier League team and play against Liverpool. Because Eddie Howe wants his team to BE Liverpool. He wants to press. He wants to counterpress. He wants to be direct, and flamboyant, and swashbuckling. This, he believes, is how football should be played. I completely agree with him. But I still wouldn’t try to play like that against LFC. I especially wouldn’t try to play like that against the Reds if I knew that, man for man — right down the line — Liverpool have my team outgunned.
Fortunately for Eddie Howe, his team does not play LFC every week. And, truth be told, most weeks his new team has done just fine since he arrived on Tyneside in November. The Geordies are quite pleased with Howe’s performance so far, and I’m confident that the new Saudi owners are pleased as well.
In the time period since Eddie Howe arrived at Newcastle, his team has amassed the sixth-most points in the league — more than Leicester City, Aston Villa, and even Manchester United. Given that Newcastle sat in 19th place when Howe arrived, the team’s performance under his leadership has been quite impressive indeed.
At this point, Newcastle have dragged themselves all the way up to the top half of the table. They currently sit in ninth place. Ninth is one of the odd middling positions in the league table at the end of the season, because it’s only the “middling” teams that have absolutely nothing left to play for. Newcastle are in no danger of relegation at this point, and there’s also essentially no possibility that Newcastle will qualify for any of the European places. Now, I’m confident that both Howe and his players will still want to impress their own fans in the closing weeks of the season. I’d also guess that Howe and his Saudi owners will be hoping that Newcastle can further impress potential transferees who they may try to sign during the summer window. Nonetheless, such hopes are mere vagaries, when held adjacent to the hopes and dreams floating through the heads of LFC. We have a lot of blood in this game, and the Geordies are merely hoping to be spoilers.
Based on the little bit I’ve watched Newcastle over recent months, they are probably slightly less swashbuckling than Bournemouth at its most aggressive. While Howe’s current crew still like to get a lot of men forward in attack, once out of possession they tend to retreat a bit before pressing. Nonetheless, Newcastle are still not a park the bus kind of team. They will leave some space, either because they want to push up their defensive line outside their own box, and/or because they commit too far forward when they have the ball themselves.
Tomorrow I expect the Boss to maintain the recent policy of very little rotation, although that policy scares me more and more as we push forward. I’ll guess Jota comes back into start, probably alongside Mané and Salah. Matip will come back in. In midfield, I would again hope that Thiago could get a rest. But Fabinho could use one too. I’m not sure if Tsimikas is healthy now. If he is, he might play.
From a scheduling standpoint, we definitely got the wrong end of the CL semifinals. The geniuses at UEFA schedule the first leg of one semifinal on Tuesday, with the second leg on Wednesday. The other semifinal is first leg Wednesday, second leg Tuesday. That second one is what we got, which means our Premier League game on Saturday gets pinched on both sides. Man City got an extra day to prep for its game tomorrow, and they will get an extra day again to prepare for their second leg against Real Madrid.
Lineup guess:
We’re dialed in, and they don’t have any reason to be. They will threaten, and maybe even score a goal. But they shouldn’t be taking our points.
Newcastle 0 – LFC 3
