A lot can happen in a week or two in the world of football, and sometimes it's not good. In the case of Liverpool, a few weeks in 2025 have dramatically changed people's perspective of their team and the job Arne Slot has done so far.

A few weeks ago, they were on track to win all four major trophies they were competing for, and they really looked like the best team in the world, with Mo Salah looking like the best player in the world. Then came a shock FA Cup exit, and then they were knocked out of the Champions League, and then they lost the Carabao Cup final to Newcastle. Suddenly, things look a little different, perceptions have changed, and expectations have been tempered.

In order to make sense of what might be happening to this Liverpool team I went to watch the Carabao Cup final more closely to see what, if any, lessons we can learn from that performance about where this team is at. But I was surprised. I started the game watching Liverpool, but I spent most of it watching Newcastle put up an impressive performance. These are not notes about Liverpool, they are observations on the game in general.

The Usual Suspects

I want to get some things out of the way here because they've been covered in some detail and I don't find them as interesting anymore, so here goes:

1. Liverpool looked tired. Of course they did, they have fielded almost exactly the same eleven players across four major competitions for most of the season. And this isn't counting the international games they've had to play. Of course the volume of games would catch up with them at some point.

2. Salah didn't play well. Honestly, no one in the Liverpool team played well, perhaps with the exceptions of Van Dijk and Kelleher, but for some reason it has become routine to single out Salah whenever Liverpool have a bad performance. So, yeah, Salah didn't have his greatest game. But what I find so interesting about it is that this was to be expected. Livramento's physicality and measured tackling has been causing problems for Premier League wingers for a while now.

3. Trent was missed. Especially in the periods of the game when Liverpool needed someone to get on the ball in midfield and play those line breaking passes he has become synonymous with. It seems like it's all set for him to move to Madrid at the moment, I don't think Liverpool have any idea just how much they're going to miss his abilities. I know I'll miss him in the Prem.

Surviving Is Winning Franklin

Adaptability is the spice of football tactics.

The first half was a bit chaotic at first, and Liverpool did come out on top of the early exchanges. It was beginning to shape up like it would be a frantic, all-action final, much like the Liverpool vs Chelsea final last time out.

But something important happened next, Liverpool didn't want to get drawn into a frantic end-to-end game (I imagine partly because of the player fatigue), so they tried to exert control on the game. The plan was to have the ball and bait Newcastle into pressing high aggressively and then go long when Newcastle press to Salah, Diaz, or Jota.

But Newcastle, so widely known for their aggressive pressing since Eddie Howe took over, refused to take the bait. Eddie Howe bet that they had a better chance of sitting off the Liverpool backline a bit when they had the ball and winning it in the midfield when Liverpool inevitably tried to play their way through. And it worked to a tee. Newcastle sat off in a midblock and Liverpool had no choice but to try and play through the midfield, and whenever they did, they were swamped by Newcastle's far superior midfielders.

Newcastle tweaked their tactics for this one-off situation to get the job done and the world did not come to an end. Are you taking notes, Ange Postecoglou?

Sandro Tonali

Eddie Howe seems to have figured out what to do with Tonali.

I watched him play for Italy a few days ago in the first leg of their quarterfinal matchup against Germany. Italy lost, but I remember casting that he was playing like Gerrard in that game, a complete midfielder in every phase of the game.

However, for a while at the beginning of his Newcastle career, it looked like fitting him and Bruno Guimaraes into one team would be difficult. Bruno is something of an all-rounder himself, although perhaps more offensively solid than Tonali (who is better defensively). But Eddie has found a way to fit them both in the same team. One match isn't a great sample size, but one thing I noticed in this game was that Bruno and Tonali are no longer occupying the same space on the pitch. In the beginning, it was not uncommon to find them in each other's way as they both tried to do the same thing. It seems Eddie Howe has gotten them to occupy different zones, in different phases of the game. Progress.

Daring Tactics?

I know the question that has been asked the most in Liverpool households since that defeat has to be this one: Why?

Why, for the sake of God almighty, was Alexis MacAlister marking Dan Burn on corners?

There is a sense in which that weird decision cost Liverpool the game because that first goal was a complete gift, and it probably would never have happened if Van Dijk or Konate had been assigned to Burn. So Isak scores, but Chiesa levels in the closing stages of the game. And really who knows where we go from there?

But it's not the tactic itself that baffled me the most. It was that even after halftime, when both teams came out, MacAlister continued to mark Dan Burn for set pieces for a while. Is there perhaps a bit of an Ange Postecoglou stubbornness about certain details with Arne Slot? I don't know, we'll find out together.

Joelinton

I spent a bit of time towards the end of the game just watching Joelinton. He made a tackle on the left side of the Newcastle box, but the ball fell to a Liverpool player, then he tracked that player almost across the length of the pitch before letting him go to get in the box and mark Darwin Nunez in case of a cross into the box. All this running was happening very close to the 90th minute of the game.

When you look at the midfield that Eddie Howe has assembled in his time at Newcastle, you can easily see an emphasis on stamina, work rate, and strength more than on technical ability for example. Joelinton is, in my opinion, the epitome of that idea in the Eddie Howe system. He is certainly not the flashiest player in the world, not even close. But he will run for his team from kickoff to whenever the game ends, and that kind of commitment is hard to buy or replace.

I also just enjoy thinking about the fact that this guy used to be a striker, a pretty bad one, and Eddie Howe came in and said, "no, you'll play in midfield," and the rest is history. It's fitting that they both win their first title for Newcastle together on the same day that Joelinton drops a MOTM worthy performance.

In Conclusion

It really doesn't matter how you win a club their first major title in 56 years. It matters even less what that trophy is. On that day at Wembley, the sea of black and white Newcastle supporters would have taken any kind of win, but credit to Eddie Howe and the club for giving them something to truly savour. Not just a win, but a dominant performance against the best team in the country (world?) right now.

Howay The Lads!