Steve McClaren knew he could easily have been sacked had Newcastle United slipped up at home to Liverpool and he was not about to underestimate the importance of a 2-0 win which derailed Jürgen Klopp’s title challenge.
“Let’s hope it’s a lightbulb moment that turns it round,” said the former England coach, whose side recorded only their third Premier League win of the season. “This gives us a chance. It saves me from banging my head against the wall tonight and wondering what I’m going to do next week.”
After conceding eight goals in their two previous games, against Leicester and Crystal Palace, these were particularly precious points, secured courtesy of Martin Skrtel’s own goal and a stunning second from Georginio Wijnaldum. “It’s been a tough two weeks,” conceded McClaren. “The team have taken a lot of criticism and rightly so and they gave the only response they can give – on the field. We were nervous at the beginning but this was a deserved win. We’ve shown that if you work hard you’ve got a chance of winning. We’ve shown what we’re capable of doing.
“This team’s got talent, it’s got ability and once we got belief and confidence we show we’ve got good players. This was a huge, huge test for us, We’ve now got to do it again next week and the week after but we’ve shown we can win football matches. We really believe in these players but they’re young and their confidence can be knocked easily. Hopefully having come through this we’ll be a lot stronger.”
McClaren revealed that another “lightbulb moment” on Thursday night persuaded him to stick with his starting XI after he pondered radical changes which might well have included dropping Wijnaldum and another key player in Moussa Sissoko. “I’d considered leaving all of them out,” he said. “But I’m not getting carried away. There’s a lot of work to do but hopefully they’re learning that, if they stick together, they’ll come through. Credit to Coloccini, he’s had a lot of stick but that was a real captain’s performance from him.”
Created by Sissoko, Wijnaldum’s 90th-minute goal encapsulated Newcastle’s counter-attacking strengths but, even then, their manager was nervous. “With a minute to go I thought we’d probably concede two,” he joked. “My emotion at the end was sheer relief. We’ll enjoy this for 24 hours.”
Klopp was rather more downbeat, if refreshingly candid. “Nearly everything,” he remarked when asked what had gone wrong. “The start, the middle and the end. Obviously it was not a good football game. That was 50% because of Newcastle and 50% because of Liverpool.
“But because of the situation Newcastle is in, you can say it is OK for them to play like this. They didn’t really create chances, but neither did we.”
Although Alberto Moreno had a potential equaliser wrongly disallowed for offside Liverpool’s manager was not protesting. “We made our goal, but because we weren’t good enough today the linesman thought: ‘Well, you don’t make world-class goals if you play this shit,’” he said, before suggesting a Liverpool side which lost for only the second time under his management while producing their worst display were possibly a little tired. ’
“It was not easy,” he said. “We had to change because of all the games we have had. If you rotate, sometimes it works and sometimes it does not. Newcastle deserved to win.”
Meanwhile Klopp claimed Liverpool’s title challenge had only ever been a media construct. “I didn’t hear anybody on this side of the table talk about this,” he said. “I have no problem if you want to talk about that, but please don’t ask me now about this. I didn’t say we were title contenders before, so why should I explain now why we are not? It’s not a reality check, only a bad game. If you think after a few weeks that everything is perfect, then that’s a little bit crazy.
“This team has big quality but today we got beat. We can’t ignore this. In professional football, if you don’t feel defeats, then something is really wrong. We feel this defeat. It’s deserved, but it hurts, like it should.”
