Newcastle United drew 2-2 at home to Liverpool on Saturday evening.
Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp has told BBC Sport that he was stunned by Newcastle United’s competitiveness on Saturday – and added to Liverpool’s official website that the Magpies play ‘just a long ball’ to Salomon Rondon.
The Reds travelled up to St James’ Park on Saturday night for another crucial game in the title race, facing a potential banana skin in the North East.
Liverpool took an early lead though, as Trent Alexander-Arnold’s corner was met by Virgil van Dijk, and he powered his header into the net as he found too much space in the Newcastle box.
Christian Atsu pulled Newcastle level from close range after Rondon’s shot had been handled by Alexander-Arnold on the line, but the Liverpool right back grabbed another assist as he crossed for Mohamed Salah to put Liverpool back in front.
Rondon grabbed his goal after the break, firing a left-footed strike past Alisson and into the net, and whilst Salah being stretchered off left Liverpool fans fearing dropped points, Divock Origi was the late hero once again as he snatched a late winner.
The title race will go to the final day of the season, and Liverpool will be praying that ex-Reds boss Brendan Rodgers does his side a favour against Manchester City on Monday night.
They didn’t exactly get one from Rafael Benitez though, as he almost left Liverpool’s title bid in real jeopardy, with Klopp calling the game the ‘opposite of a friendly’ and saying ‘wow, that was competition’ after seeing a battling Magpies display.
Klopp did though add that Newcastle’s style was ‘just a long ball’ to Rondon, meaning his Liverpool players had to be strong and fight rather than necessarily pretty.
“I know what kind of boys I have – who doesn’t know after the game today?” said Klopp. “With the schedule we have, the games we have, and then playing here – obviously, the absolute opposite of a friendly game – playing against a team with the style they have. You have to run, we tried to press, you have to be around the second ball. It’s a big challenge to concentrate 100% always. I saw in the face of the boys’ reaction, it was good – nobody went nuts or whatever. If anyone thought Newcastle weren’t playing for anything, wow, that was competition – but we deserved to win.”
“The style of play of Newcastle is not really to defend with tactical moves, it is just a long ball, Rondon is fighting for it and then you wait for the decision of the ref, foul or no foul. If it’s no foul you have to carry on and if it is a foul, it is a free-kick in either direction. That means you cannot do it with a proper formation, you have to do it with legs, with runs and stuff like that – and that makes it even more intense, that’s why it makes sense to keep the ball. That’s what we tried a lot of times, we did it really well in a lot of moments,” he added.
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