Liverpool's Struggles Exposed at Newcastle: A Tough Draw
Pat Nevin didn’t need long on BBC Radio 5 Live to nail the mood. “You can see the weaknesses that Liverpool had last season have not gone away.” At St James’ Park, they weren’t just exposed. They were invited in and made comfortable.
Andoni Iraola’s call to station Florian Wirtz in front of a flimsy midfield pair of Ryan Gravenberch and Dominik Szoboszlai backfired almost instantly. Everyone knew that pivot was light on defensive discipline. Newcastle knew it best of all.
This is not last season’s Newcastle. Their most dangerous forward has gone, their two best midfielders too. Yet they sliced through Liverpool with embarrassing ease, as if nothing had changed in a year.
Gravenberch and Szoboszlai are gifted, technically sharp, forward-thinking players. That’s the problem. They think forward. They run forward. They arrive in the box. What they don’t do is protect. The evidence came inside five minutes.
Both midfielders were in Newcastle’s penalty area when Liverpool lost the ball. One pass, then another, and Anthony Elanga was tearing into the acres of space they had vacated. The finish put Newcastle 1-0 up and re-ran a familiar nightmare: Liverpool caught high, midfield missing, defence exposed.
The pattern didn’t stop there. It hasn’t stopped for months.
Even when Cody Gakpo dragged Liverpool level, the respite barely lasted. Just 176 seconds after the equaliser, Joe Willock restored Newcastle’s lead, helped again by visiting carelessness and positional chaos. The same gaps. The same slow reactions. The same sense that any turnover might end with Alisson picking the ball out of his net.
Iraola reacted. He had to. With Liverpool behind for a second time, he turned to his bench, sending on Alexis Mac Allister and new signing Victor Munoz for Wirtz and Ngumoha.
Munoz changed the temperature of the game. Direct, decisive, he ran at Newcastle and forced the penalty that allowed Szoboszlai to make it 2-2. It was the kind of contribution that sticks in a manager’s mind.
Ngumoha’s night told a different story. Asked to step into Mohamed Salah’s role on the right despite preferring the left, he was handed one of the most unforgiving assignments in English football. There will be empathy for him inside the dressing room. Outside it, not much noise either way. He was set up to struggle.
Wirtz, though, is running out of excuses.
Liverpool supporters have given the Germany international time. Plenty of it. He arrived at Anfield last summer to huge expectation and a £100 million price tag, billed as the man to unlock tight games and elevate the attack. Instead, he keeps drifting through matches like this one, neat on the ball, tidy in his touches, but nowhere near influential enough.
Jamie Carragher had flagged the issue before a ball was kicked this season. Writing in the Daily Telegraph, the former Liverpool defender challenged Wirtz to prove he was more than just “neat and tidy.” At St James’ Park, the answer was brutal. He wasn’t.
Yes, he registered one of Liverpool’s few shots on target in the first half. That’s not nothing. But it’s not remotely enough for a player signed to be a difference-maker, not a footnote.
On the left wing, he has often looked lost. In his preferred central role, he still hasn’t grabbed a game by the throat. This was meant to be his stage. Instead, he slipped into the background again.
He’s not alone in underwhelming. Alexander Isak, back at Newcastle and leading the line, endured a grim evening of his own. Service was limited, true, but when his big moment finally came midway through the second half, he lashed the ball high into the stands. The home fans roared with laughter. Liverpool’s travelling support did not.
Isak and Wirtz were supposed to be the headline acts of Liverpool’s rebuild, the marquee signings to drag the club deep into the Champions League and back into the title conversation. Together, they cost a nine-figure sum. A year on, both are labouring against a Newcastle side stripped of its best weapons.
That’s the wider concern. This isn’t just about two misfiring stars. There are issues everywhere. Milos Kerkez struggled badly on the left. Jeremie Frimpong offered little security on the right. The back line looked exposed, the midfield unbalanced, the attack uncertain of its hierarchy without Salah.
The season is young, and Iraola’s tenure has barely begun. Turning around a squad that limped to fifth last year without a trophy was never going to be instant work. Szoboszlai was right to talk about the positives: twice behind, twice they fought back. There is character there, and some attacking threat.
But character alone won’t fix a soft centre or justify a transfer strategy that has poured huge money into players still searching for their place.
On Tyneside, Liverpool escaped with a draw. Wirtz and Isak didn’t escape the questions. How long can a club with Liverpool’s ambitions wait for its big bets to pay off?
