Neil Atkinson’s post-match review for The Anfield Wrap after Liverpool 2 Newcastle United 0 in the 2024-2025 Premier League season…
SUNDAY wasn’t so much about dreaming of the Promised Land as looking at it while the plane descends.
Today is about getting off the plane and getting to passport control of the Promised Land. Standing in the queue. Excited, so excited about this holiday there with your mates.
Let me tell you, it’s hot and sunny in the Promised Land. Promise. We got there once and it was the hottest summer in memory. The issue was we couldn’t meet up and hang out, and spend time loving and reflecting and remembering.
We couldn’t think about the fact we never moved away because we wanted to go there together from Liverpool. We couldn’t have those cascading moments from the day itself to the lift to the parade. They stopped the second James Milner cleared off the line against Bournemouth.
We made the hardest journey and shared that, but we never managed to hit the beach and go wild.
We’ve all got our own version. I have Adam Melia’s sitting in trees and smiling at passers-by in my head.
I want the parade when the world comes and we share some pavement, screaming and shouting about this weird little city in the North West of this perpetually broken little country. But this weird city does this game of ours better than anybody else. This broken country gives us the platform.
I want a summer with a weekend in the Liverpool South that is Glastonbury thinking of it all. I want the day they secure it with you, you in my arms, that you cascading through so many yous. Look. There. Ours. I had Sunday with so many people in Pogues and tonight with the masses in The Glenbuck.
The Promised Land for us all now feels just an administrative process away and, my word, do these Liverpool players deserve enormous credit for that.
There is more to be done. There is always more to be done. Football is always Shankly’s ever-flowing river. None of this is about complacency, but instead about craving moments we haven’t shared since 1990 and – if you were born in 1981 like your correspondent here – these are moments you have never entirely had and realised. Even in 2020 we had to wait.
But me and you, we’re good at waiting. We see waiting as an act of love.
Speaking of which, Liverpool play their football beautifully tonight. They play with the intensity of sheer care. They show certainty and passion.
They cross with verve and pass with elegance and charm. Liverpool manage the space across the pitch. The power of passes, by and large, is too much for Newcastle, which shows just how good Liverpool are, given how effective Newcastle can be.
Newcastle are good. Bruno and Tonali play well. They have a plan. But everyone has a plan until they get passed off the park.
We are treated to some Trent-Mo classics, a partnership that will go down in the history books as having provided Liverpool supporters with joy unconfined. For all the commentary and noises off – contracts, transfers, wants and needs – there it is on the pitch. An unmistakable ability to bend time and space according to your will and a duo so well linked it was written in the stars.
There is something about the weight of the pass Trent Alexander-Arnold makes and the weightless power with which Mo Salah receives it that is unstoppable tonight. It enables Liverpool again and again to control this game and stay in possession of the ball while covering huge stretches of pitch. Glorious.
Luis Diaz, as a result of this, doesn’t score the greatest goal Liverpool haven’t scored since Luis Suarez in 2014 against Arsenal. But Luis Diaz does so much else for the first hour of this game. His performance is that of the greatest street fighter. It is adorable.
He grits his teeth and eases his hips over and over again. He holds it up, carries it, wins it, commits his man, finds his teammate. His first hour is brilliant and then his race is run, not unreasonably.
It is not written in the stars that Liverpool win this game. We all breathe a sigh of relief when we know Isak won’t play, Newcastle’s out-and-out game winner of the season so far. But he has never been their only option upfront and, between the first and second goals, Newcastle have fight in them.
Liverpool don’t start the second half as strongly as they should. As we have seen in recent games, this is a long old season and players that sometimes gel well together can fall flat with tiredness. We lose possession. But our midfield step up and charge forward.
Alexis Mac Allister has sometimes looked shaky through the winter, sometimes missing passes or not imposing himself upon games. The opposite is true tonight with him and Dominik Szoboszlai showing their mettle. They are the game’s two best players for the full 98 minutes. They bend everything to their will and win every battle, score every goal.
Szoboszlai has arrived at the party in the most profound and significant way. He has found his niche and he doesn’t shirk a thing all night. It’s five games and five ‘first whistle to the last’ showings. He has carried his bat. He is not out.
Mo Salah sets up Mac Allister for the second and Liverpool are in charge once again. But think about that setup. Think about how easy the ball is for Salah to roll to MacAllister – the reason is because they are so scared of Salah. Scared of the great ball, the great goal, the great run, they miss the easy ball.
Salah has two assists in his last two marked out by their sheer simplicity. That simplicity comes because of how complicated it is to defend him.
Defend him Lewis Hall does. Hall plays well. This is important. Hall has a good game and Hall’s game is a living nightmare. It is like watching an excellent swimmer drown. The best he can do for all his training, all his fitness is flail for much of the game. It’s the difference not between being a good player to a great one as being an international-class footballer to one who transcends the sport.
Hall is a good player who may become a very good one. Salah is moving beyond greatness into the status of a genuine legend.
The game today didn’t have Arne Slot on the sideline. Instead, John Heitinga continued his assault on the chart of Greatest Living Evertonian, but ultimately we were again watching Virgil van Dijk’s Liverpool. He too is transcending greatness by being the curator of the journey to the Promised Land. How will we ever be able to thank him enough?
Or indeed the missing manager. The man who has thrown the gauntlet down, the man who has managed these moments with calm. Or indeed every last one of them. Wataru Endo winning tackles like they are going out of fashion.
Nothing is done, but sometimes winning the title is like going bankrupt. You do it slowly and then quickly. This bit, all of a sudden, this bit feels like the quick bit. And you are there getting off the plane, getting your Lonely Planet out and seeing what you have ticked in the book that you must see when you get to the Promised Land.
You look around and you see the people you love, the people you have shared the journey with, the people who have made it all worthwhile.
We go together. Promise.
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