Scott Murray takes a look at Liverpool's defeat by struggling Newcastle, and suggests that if that's as bad as Klopp's Liverpool get then things actually loook pretty good.
On the morning of Saturday 8th April 1950, Liverpool stood
proudly at the top of the old First Division. The first post-war
champions three years earlier, George Kay's side were going for the
elusive league and FA Cup double, which hadn't been won in England since
Aston Villa did it in 1897.
A place in the cup final had already been booked - Bob Paisley's famous lob had done for Everton
in the semi at Maine Road - and they were five games away from the
league. It was at this point that they travelled to St James Park.
Liverpool fans are hereby permitted to embrace that chilling sense of foreboding. You might as well.
Liverpool had drawn with Newcastle at Anfield earlier in the
season, and had been lucky to do so. Newcastle's winger Bobby Mitchell
scored a screaming volley, sending the ball whistling past Cyril Sidlow,
but the referee disallowed the goal for ungentlemanly conduct.
Mitchell's crime? He'd shouted to his team-mates to "leave it to me", a
call which the referee claimed had put off Liverpool captain (and future
manager) Phil Taylor.
That ludicrous decision understandably rankled with Mitchell,
who didn't waste much time in paying Liverpool back in the return match
on Tyneside. After seven minutes, he skated past Bill Shepherd and Bill
Jones to crack the opener past Ray Minshull. Two minutes later George
Hannah added a second. Willie Fagan reduced Liverpool's arrears before
the break, but Albert Stubbins, formerly of Newcastle and later to be a
cover star of Sgt Pepper, had been taken off with concussion. No subs in
those days of course. No subs, no hope.
Newcastle's
Frank Brennan (r) collects the ball as Liverpool's Albert stubbins (l)
looks on - First Division clash in 1950 - Imago
Billy Liddell managed to level up the teams during the second
half by accidentally injuring Jack Fairbrother, but Newcastle proved
themselves better at 10-a-side as well. Ernie Taylor, Mitchell and Tommy
Walker added three more. Liverpool had been routed 5-1; the defeat
shattered their confidence. Knocked off the top of the league table that
day, they proceeded to fall away dramatically, losing three and
drawing one of the last four, finishing a miserable eighth. They also
lost the cup final to Arsenal,
outplayed by Reg Lewis, Joe Mercer and Denis Compton, Alex Forbes
adding injury to insult by spending the afternoon at Wembley kicking
Liddell around the park like an old sock.
The Newcastle defeat and subsequent collapse had consequences
over the long haul too. Newcastle finished above Liverpool in the table
that year, a club on the up. Their famous
Milburn-Mitchell-Walker-Robledo side never quite got it together in the
league to go on and claim a title, but they did manage three FA Cups.
The Fifties still stand as Newcastle's definitive era.
That period in time didn't do much for a shellshocked Liverpool,
though. They spent the rest of the decade in the doldrums, a slow
decline ending in relegation in 1954. In their first season in the
Second Division, they were thumped 9-1 by Birmingham City.
As Liverpool defeats at Newcastle go, then, the one suffered by Jurgen Klopp's side last weekend doesn't look so bad.
"We had one of those days," sighed Billy Liddell back in 1950,
and Klopp and Liverpool have been peddling a similar line this week.
Klopp's succinct capsule review painted his side as "s**t"; "nearly
everything", he opined, went wrong.
Newcastle
United's Georginio Wijnaldum has his shot deflected into the net by
Liverpool's Martin Skrtel for an own goal and the first for Newcastle -
Reuters
A bad day at the office unquestionably, but for once history is
being written by the losers. Props to Klopp for not attempting to
sugar-coat the pill, or insist that black was white: when asked which
passage of the match he was most displeased with, the tinder-dry German
laughed "the start, the middle and the end." But his criticism, while
justified in the main, seemed just a little out of proportion, designed
one suspects to send a forceful message to his team. No, Liverpool
weren't very good, not very good at all. But if this is as bad as it's
going to get for Klopp's side, they won't have too many worries.
Consider the constituent parts of the match. Liverpool were
dominant during the opening exchanges, but after a flurry of corners the
golden chance for a shot fell to Martin Skrtel. Christian Benteke
somehow contrived to miss from two yards. Adam Lallana cut open the home
defence to tee up Daniel Sturridge, only for the anxious striker to snatch wildly at the chance. Alberto Moreno
scored what was either a world-class goal or a world-class fluke, but
no matter, because the flag incorrectly went up. (A Liverpool left-back
denied a worldy against Newcastle? Shades of Alec Lindsay in the 1974 FA Cup final.)
The game was subsequently swung by a ludicrous own-goal
deflection, and the second came when the peace accords had already been
signed by Klopp and Steve McLaren on the touchline. On another day,
then, it wouldn't have taken much for Liverpool to scramble a win, just
as Newcastle eventually did. The Moreno effort alone suggests, no matter
how bad the overall performance, that Liverpool were worth at least
what Klopp referred to as a "dirty point".
Liverpool manager Juergen Klopp - Reuters
It would be preposterous to insist that Liverpool acquitted
themselves well: they only had one shot on target all afternoon, for
goodness sake, and that in the 89th minute. Benteke and Roberto Firmino, meanwhile, looked worryingly impotent for £60 million-worth of shopping.
But there's putting in a poor performance like this, and then
there's failing to turn up at all, which Liverpool sides from Souness to
Rodgers
- and no exceptions in between - have been wont to do over the years
with notoriously gruesome regularity. If this is the worst Klopp will
tolerate - and the talking down of his team's performance suggested he's
drawing a line below which they must never dip - dirty points might be
easier to source in the future.
And dirty points play a precious part of any title challenge.
And that title challenge is still on as things stand, even though
Liverpool, supposedly champions elect after their League Cup rout of Southampton,
were officially written off by the same knee-jerkers just four days
later. Even the greatest teams are allowed a bad day at the office -
witness Bayern Munich against Borussia Monchengladbach - never mind one in semi-transition like Klopp's.
Redefining "nadir" may seem like clutching at straws, it's true.
But you've got to take away *something* from an afternoon like that.
Scott Murray
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