Now that the dust has settled and the red mist has dissipated, it’s time to look at last night’s match without my black and white specs on.
Am I still annoyed at Isak’s disallowed goal? Absolutely. VAR has made offside a joke. A toenail, armpit or kneecap isn’t enough to gain a clear advantage and offsides need to go back to the clear daylight rule with the benefit of VAR. And what happened to the “benefit of the doubt to strikers” idea? Am I still annoyed that eight minutes were played after five minutes were held up on the board? 100%. Yes, there were a few stoppages for various reasons, but, despite what Liverpool fans, players and Klopp say, they were legitimate stoppages. As Eddie Howe pointed out, Liverpool had an extra day of recovery between matches, our players were exhausted, of course they’re going to cramp up, of course they’re going to want to slow down the play.
That being said – Rule 1 of professional football: Play to the whistle. The fact is, Newcastle failed to adequately defend the corner from which they scored. The game was still live, so regardless of whether or not it should have been over minutes beforehand, Newcastle’s defence still had a job to do.
However you look at it though, you have to praise the lads. We are five games into the season, we’ve played the champions and the runners-up and have only suffered one defeat – at a ground where we haven’t won in nearly 30 years. This time last year we were still nine games away from picking up our first win of the season. We have come so far in such a short space of time.
We’ve also just broken our transfer record for a striker who instantly proved his worth, whereas this time last year we were all banging our heads off the wall after being told we couldn’t afford a £1m loan fee for Hamza Choudhury.
We are miles ahead of where we were just 12 months ago. Let’s swallow this narrow defeat, and take the anger into our game against Crystal Palace on Saturday.