By Opta Analyst | Created at 2025-03-17 16:41:28 | Updated at 2025-03-18 02:54:29
10 hours ago
Newcastle’s 2-1 win over Liverpool in the 2025 League Cup final ended a long period without a major trophy, but how did they do it? We look at six key areas where they won the battle against Arne Slot’s side at Wembley Stadium.
Newcastle United finally ended their long wait for a major trophy on Sunday, defeating Liverpool 2-1 in the League Cup final at Wembley. It had been 56 since their last success in the 1969 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup but even longer since their last major domestic honour: the 1955 FA Cup.
With 23 points between them and Liverpool in the Premier League table, most expected the trophy drought to continue, but Eddie Howe’s side perfectly executed a plan to defeat the Reds in the final. Here, we look at where the game was won and lost.
Winning The Midfield Battle
Ahead of kick-off, we spoke on these very pages about how this game pitted arguably the Premier League’s two best midfields against each other. Be that as it may, on Sunday only one of them showed up.
Joelinton was outstanding. He won more duels on his own (nine) than Liverpool’s midfield trio of Ryan Gravenberch, Dominik Szoboszlai and Alexis Mac Allister combined (eight). Add in Bruno Guimarães, who also won nine duels, and it becomes clear just how physically dominant Newcastle were in central areas.
Joelinton set the tone early on with his intensity and aggression, driving Newcastle’s midfield press and energising both his teammates and the crowd. He was as much enforcer as he was emotional leader, constantly rallying the Toon Army with every crucial tackle and key block.
His partner-in-crime, Guimarães, won back possession for Newcastle nine times, more than anyone else on the pitch.
Alongside them, Sandro Tonali provided the composure and intelligence to complement the chaos, knitting the team together.
As a unit, Newcastle’s midfield trio pressed and harried Liverpool into submission. They gave Slot’s side no rhythm on the ball, consistently forcing errors and disrupting any attempt at control.
Liverpool just couldn’t get anything going. Gravenberch completed just 81% of his passes; his sixth-lowest pass completion rate in a start in all competitions this season. Mac Allister fared only marginally better, completing 84.9% – his eighth-lowest figure in a game he started.
This was a battle Newcastle won comprehensively.
Isolating Dan Burn at the Back Post
“I’ve had worse weeks,” Dan Burn grinned down the camera to Sky Sports. “I don’t want to go to sleep because I feel like I’m dreaming and it’s all going to be a lie.”
No need to worry, Dan – this is all very real.
It’s been a remarkable few days for the Blyth-born defender. Just 48 hours after receiving his first England call-up, Burn powered in the first of Newcastle’s two goals at Wembley, before collecting both a winners’ medal and the man-of-the-match award.
He was immense throughout. A commanding presence at both ends of the pitch, Burn dominated in the air, winning six of his seven aerial duels – at least two more than any other player on the pitch.
The most decisive of those came in attack: a towering, bullet header from just inside the penalty area to give Newcastle the lead.
It was a moment that highlighted not only Burn’s physical presence, but the planning behind Newcastle’s set-piece approach, as Eddie Howe referenced after the game: “We were working on those corners tirelessly for two weeks. He’s delivered one from long range. Incredible header.”
It was not a surprise to see the 6-foot-7 defender win a header. But what was slightly confusing was that Liverpool chose to combat him by asking the considerably shorter Mac Allister to mark him. It was a mismatch that Burn exploited constantly.
Arne Slot put that down to a zonal-marking system. “We have five players zonally close to our goal,” explained Slot post-match. “If the ball comes there, we have our five strongest players to attack the ball. Normally, and I think he’s an exception, I’ve never seen in my life a player from that far away heading a ball with so much force into the far corner. Ninety-nine out of 100 times, that will not lead to a goal.”
But Liverpool can’t say they weren’t warned. Burn’s goal came from Newcastle’s sixth corner of the game. He had already threatened earlier – on the third corner, he met a delivery at the back post that eventually fell to Guimarães, whose shot was smothered by Caoimhin Kelleher.
On the fifth, Burn again beat Mac Allister in the air, with Guimarães unable to generate enough power on his flick-on to trouble the goalkeeper.
The sixth time, however, Liverpool were finally punished. Should they have adapted sooner?
Keeping Mohamed Salah Quiet
There’s no getting around it. Sunday was an off day for Mohamed Salah.
He had just 23 touches of the ball, and only one of them was inside the Newcastle penalty area. Even that touch was near the byline, and therefore almost no threat on goal.
He failed to record a single shot or create a single chance, something he has only done three times for Liverpool in a game he has started, after October 2020 against Arsenal in the League Cup (61 minutes played) and against Paris Saint-Germain in the first leg of their UEFA Champions League last-16 tie earlier this month (86 minutes). It was therefore the first time he has ever failed to be directly involved in a shot while playing the full 90 minutes in a Liverpool shirt.
Salah has been sensational this season, on course for the best individual season in terms of goal involvements in Premier League history, but perhaps it should have come as no surprise that he didn’t score. His strike from the penalty spot in the 2019 Champions League final remains his only goal in 10 final appearances at club or international level, meaning he has never scored from open play in a final.
Nothing should be taken away from Newcastle’s defensive performance, though. Few teams have stopped Salah scoring or setting up a goal all season, so they deserve huge credit for ensuring he had so little impact. They consistently cut off his route towards goal and forced him back and inside almost every time he got the ball. As we will come to, Newcastle left-back Tino Livramento had a huge say on the game at the attacking end of the pitch, but he also did a sterling job of keeping the best player in English football completely quiet.
Finding the Perfect Balance Between Full-Backs
Howe’s full-backs played a key part in Newcastle’s excellent victory, with both Kieran Trippier and Livramento putting in performances that could be considered among their best in a Newcastle shirt.
Trippier had one of his strongest games for Newcastle when it mattered. Although he was deployed deeper than usual from the right side of defence, Eddie Howe sacrificed Trippier’s attacking qualities to allow Livramento to get forward more often on the left.
Although Trippier led the Newcastle rankings for touches (61) and passes, both overall (33) and completed (23), only eight of his successful passes came in the attacking half – well below his Premier League average of 29 per 90 minutes in 2024-25.
Of course, he helped provide one of the key moments of the final, too. Ever-dependable from set-piece situations across his career, Trippier delivered once again, lofting in a perfect cross from his corner onto Burn’s head for the opening goal.
There have certainly been moments in recent memory where Trippier looked as though his days at the top level might be numbered, but based on this performance, he’s still able to mix it with the best, even if he was the oldest player on the pitch (34 years, 178 days old).
On the other side, Livramento showed exactly why new England manager Thomas Tuchel considers him one of his best options at left-back.
The furthest forward of Newcastle’s defenders during the victory at Wembley, the 22-year-old teamed up with Harvey Barnes to cause Liverpool’s emergency right-back Jarell Quansah numerous problems. They combined to get around Quansah before Livramento’s cross led to Isak’s goal.
Livramento was key to Newcastle’s progression upfield, too. He carried the ball 144 metres upfield in the final win, which was more than twice as far as any other Newcastle player (Jacob Murphy – 71.6m). Only twice this season has Livramento progressed further upfield with ball carries in a competitive match for the club.
Dealing With Liverpool’s Direct Passes
Liverpool are far from a long-ball team, but long, raking passes are absolutely a key part of their arsenal. These passes are usually aimed into space behind the opposition for Mohamed Salah or any of their many other willing runners to chase. It means the opposition’s defensive line and goalkeeper need to be perfectly coordinated to deal with this threat.
Newcastle goalkeeper Nick Pope isn’t at his most comfortable charging off his line. In fact, a sweeper-keeper isn’t really something Newcastle use at all under Howe. But at Wembley on Sunday, he had prepared his team for this Liverpool tactic, and Pope happily played out of his comfort zone, charging off his line more than he normally does.
He came out of his box to sweep up behind his defence and win the ball three times in the game. It was the second most by any Newcastle goalkeeper in a match in any competition since August 2023 and Pope’s fourth-highest tally in any competition in his top-flight career. And despite Newcastle generally playing quite deep, Pope had eight touches outside his own penalty area.
Liverpool weren’t helped by the fact that their best producer of long balls, Trent Alexander-Arnold, missed out through injury, and their other defenders weren’t able to replicate his usual output.
Too many of their long balls were under-hit and led to their forward players having to challenge for high balls, but Newcastle dominated these from start to finish, winning 68% of the game’s aerial duels. It all meant Liverpool completed just 33% of their long balls, which was way down on their long-ball success rate in Premier League games this season of 47%. As a result, Slot’s side were significantly limited.
Having Alexander Isak in the Team
Having a striker like Alexander Isak helped, too.
There aren’t many better ways to celebrate making your 100th appearance for a club than helping secure their first major domestic trophy in 70 years.
Isak’s goal, which ended up being the match-winning strike, was his 58th for the club – only Erling Haaland (113) and Salah (84) have scored more for Premier League clubs since his debut for the Magpies.
The Swedish forward has been consistently lethal in front of goal this season. Among all Premier League players to have scored 10 goals in all competition this season, only Nottingham Forest’s Chris Wood (31.6%) has a higher conversion rate than Isak (27.4%). It’s the same for non-penalty shots, too, with Wood’s 27.8% the only average higher than Isak’s (24.7%) among those with 10+ non-penalty goals.
Isak’s goal took him to 23 for the season and just two off his tally in all competitions from last term (25). In the Premier League era, only two other Newcastle players have scored 20+ goals in back-to-back campaigns – Les Ferdinand in 1995-96 (29) and 1996-97 (21), and Alan Shearer in five successive seasons between 1998-99 and 2003-04.
Not too dissimilar to Ousmane Dembélé in PSG’s midweek Champions League win at Anfield, Isak often dropped into deeper positions to play between the lines and draw Liverpool’s two central defenders out of position. While Isak didn’t see a lot of the ball – his 19 touches was a joint-low among the Newcastle starting XI – his clever movement created space for his teammates in the attacking half.
It was all too much for Liverpool to handle.
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