NEWCASTLE fans have waited 70 years to see their club win silverware and finally the Toon Army have something to celebrate.
Goals by Blyth-born Dan Burn and star striker Alexander Isak sunk Liverpool 2-1 to lift the Carabao Cup at Wembley.
Eddie Howe outsmarted Arne Slot on set-pieces[/caption]
Newcastle’s midfield three was crucial to the dominant performance[/caption]
Newcastle fully deserved victory and laid the blueprint for how to stop Arne Slot’s Reds and nullify goal machine Mo Salah.
In the latest episode of SunSport’s Tactics Exposed, our expert DEAN SCOGGINS explains ‘Howe’ it was done…
1. Burn Baby Burn
A local lad scoring in a cup final is what dreams are made of.
But this was masterminded by Howe and his coaches, shattering Liverpool‘s zonal marking system.
They used Burn perfectly. Slot leaves five big lads in front of the six-yard box by the goalkeeper and then he sends the other players out to mark, like the smaller Alexis MacAllister.
So Newcastle put Fabian Schar, Joelinton and big Burn in those positions to hit clipped, flat corners, letting them win aerial duels.
Liverpool defend like this a lot and it’s fantastic from Howe and Jason Tindall because what they’ve taken Liverpool’s two best headers in Ibrahima Konate and Van Dijk out of the picture as they can’t get to the ball.
There’s this square in front of them that becomes Newcastle’s territory and it is all wrong for Slot.
Once pushing trolleys at Asda, now in the England squad, what a week Burn has had.
Dan Burn’s bullet header nestled into the bottom corner[/caption]
2. Isak leaves VVD in a spin
Isak’s classic “go, stop, go” movement fooled Van Dijk. A burst of movement before holding back and going again to create a yard of space.
Making it 2-0, it was Van Dijk’s mistake, he got caught under the ball and he knew it.
The cross comes in from the left and the ball goes over both Isak and Van Dijk to Jacob Murphy.
As the ball goes to winger, Isak does his movement to create himself three or four yards of space.
As the ball goes over the Liverpool skipper’s head, his position is wrong. He gets himself into a situation where Isak can almost see his shirt number and he takes his eye off the Swede.
Van Dijk should be in a position so when the ball drops to Isak, he can sprint out and close the ball down to, at the very worst, block the shot. Instead he is caught nowhere near the goalscorer.
Van Dijk’s reaction said it all[/caption]
3. Three midfield heroes
First and foremost, they were the epitome of the Geordie nation, the Toon Army. Everything came through them.
Joelinton, Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali – the blocks, the dual successes, the headers, the tackles and most importantly, they work together as a three.
In the match, Tonali is the one who breaks out of the three to join Isak in the press. And then the other two are ready to pounce behind.
It is man-for-man, but if it they get through the press, they work hard to retreat into a compact shape.
Liverpool did not have control and their midfielder had no time on the ball – you’re looking around thinking, ‘as soon as I receive the ball here, I’m going to get smashed by one of these physical three’. It felt like three against one.
But tactics aside, to implement a plan properly and have the levels of effort required is a credit to those three players.
You can tell a team how to play and you can talk about tactics, but if the players don’t trust it and don’t commit to it, it’s not going to work.
4. ‘Howe’ they broke Liverpool
Eddie Howe take a bow, this was a blueprint of how to stop Liverpool – after PSG did a similar thing in the Champions League.
Newcastle pressed with four or five players, forcing Liverpool to go long.
The most important thing is the fifth player makes a good decision, because if he goes and there’s too many – that’s the press gone and you’re outnumbered in midfield and in front of the back four.
In the coaching manual, we are told to make the pitch small when you’re defending and make the pitch big when you’re attacking.
But what Newcastle do is throw that out the window and go, ‘we’re going to make it massive and force the keeper and defenders to go long’ into the space behind the press.
Their man-for-man pressing system forced Liverpool into going direct and when they went long, those duels were won easily by Burn, Schar and Joelinton.
The midfield made it chaotic and it was very, very difficult for the Reds to get out.
5. Slow Mo – how Salah was stopped
In Salah‘s eight games at Wembley, he has scored in just one of them.
Again, he was a shadow of his usual self at the home of English football and he touched the ball just once in the box versus the Magpies.
Liverpool like to use Salah in build-up, coming in off the sideline to receive passes into his feet that let him turn and dribble Liverpool up the pitch.
But the Toon created a black and white wall around him by swarming as the balls were fired into him.
They stopped these passes being effective and every time he got the ball, he touched it backwards towards his own half.
Liverpool could not isolate Salah one-vs-one against Tino Livramento, who is a good one-vs-one defender anyway, doing an outstanding job if the Egyptian King ever did have space to run into.
Most of Salah’s touches came from chasing long balls over the top into the channel after Newcastle’s brilliant press.
Newcastle had the effort and application to make this a perfect final performance and make their fans’ dreams come true.
Liverpool are 12 points ahead and have won the Premier League – but their route to the title would not be so simple if Howe laid out this masterplan earlier in the season.
