How Newcastle United Nullified Liverpool to Win the Carabao Cup

Newcastle United under Eddie Howe have to come to embody an intense spirit and it’s exactly that spirit that won them the Carabao Cup. Their bully boys midfield is ferocious to come up against, Joelinton, Sandro Tonali and Bruno Guimarães almost never lose duels as Liverpool found out the hard way.

How Newcastle United nullified Liverpool was out of possession. First of all, Liverpool were forced to go long and forced to go wide mainly because whenever Liverpool would have the ball in build-up, Newcastle pushed up Tino Livramento on Liverpool’s full-back.

Whilst this happened, Newcastle’s midfield would match up Liverpool’s 3v3 (Joelinton on Dominik Szoboszlai, Sandro Tonali on Ryan Gravenberch, Guimarães on Gravenberch). 

What this meant, was there wasn’t a way for Liverpool to get the ball into the midfielders and then to the attack instead they just opted to go long and Newcastle United didn’t have a problem in dealing with aerial duels.

A lot of the game looks like the image below:

A big black and white wall of five midfielders, squeezing together and almost all of Liverpool’s attack behind it. In front of it was Liverpool’s defence, Alexis Mac Allister and Gravenberch with no idea how to get the ball through.

With an aggressive press Liverpool were forced to go long and whenever they did, Newcastle United would gobble up the duel and second ball. It may not seem like the most fanciest of tactics but it was certainly effective as the out of possession work helped to thwart an already tired Liverpool team.

By: Dharnish Iqbal / @dharnishiqbal

Featured Image: @GabFoligno / Alex Pantling / Getty Images