Champions end with a flourish against Newcastle
At the end of a season which had no guarantee of being finished, but then felt like it took an age to
conclude, Newcastle and Liverpool could be forgiven for doing little more than going through the motions on Sunday.
The Premier League champions did enough to triumph 3-1, recording their highest-ever points tally of 99, with Sadio Mane’s superb curled finish crowning a watershed campaign that will long live in the memory – both for Liverpool’s football and the coronavirus-enforced suspension of the game.
The match at St James’ Park started in rapid fashion, with Dwight Gayle’s opener for Newcastle arriving after just 25 seconds. It was the earliest goal ever scored on the final day of a Premier League season – as well as the earliest Liverpool have ever conceded in the competition.
Virgil van Dijk had been sucked into midfield and impeded Allan Saint-Maximin, affording Newcastle what seemed a harmless free-lick. Jonjo Shelvey cleverly took it quickly, hitting Gayle early and with Joe Gomez dithering and young Neco Williams not fully reading the danger, he slotted past Alisson.
Then, as expected with two teams with nothing left to play for, very little of note happened. But for Liverpool doing what they have grown accustomed to: doing what is necessary to win.
“The boys played an incredible game, not a perfect game. Like you say in this country a dead rubber,” Jurgen Klopp admitted.
“I didn’t like the goal we conceded. I liked the game. It’s far away from being perfect but over the season we did not just win games when everything was perfect, we won a lot of difficult games too.”
Liverpool had equalised through superb work from Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, whose change of pace and driving run set up a delivery that was deftly headed in by Van Dijk.
In the second half, Divock Origi drilled in a fine effort from 20 yards after spending most of the encounter being a frustrating figure.
Jurgen Klopp threw on his explosive front three of Mohamed Salah, Roberto Firmino and Mane late on with the match evolving to offensive might versus Newcastle’s defensive resilience, with the Senegal international wrapping up matters in stellar fashion. He cut in from the left and unleashed a lovely curler into the far corner.
The victory saw Liverpool match Manchester City’s top-flight record of 32 wins in a season, set in 2017-18 and matched in 2018-19.
Comfortably winning was a worthy way of closing a remarkable campaign, in which the Reds had no equal.