'Give them credit': Roy Keane suggests why Liverpool earned his respect despite 'shocking' Newcastle performance
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Liverpool supporters are still on cloud nine this week after the euphoria of Monday’s win over Newcastle United.
The Reds arguably headed into the game as slight underdogs in what would be a legendary atmosphere at St James’ Park.
Given their status as champions and Newcastle’s lack of centre-forward, that might sound like a strange thing to say.
But there aren’t many teams who could go to the north east and withstand such an intense evening.
Nevertheless, Liverpool have an excellent record against Newcastle and they ultimately added to that on a topsy-turvy night at St James’.
It was not always pretty for the Reds, but that almost makes the win even sweeter.
And according to Roy Keane, Arne Slot and his Liverpool team deserve great credit for coming through one of the Premier League‘s toughest away assignments with the points intact.
Photo by Richard Sellers/Sportsphoto/Allstar via Getty Images
Ahead of Monday’s game, Newcastle fans were geared up to see their team test the physical strength of Liverpool.
A banner in the stands read ‘Get into them’ with the Magpies’ players very much taking that to heart.
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Speaking on The Overlap about the game on Thursday morning, Keane highlighted the fact that despite a poor performance, the Reds stood up in the face of overwhelming Newcastle aggression.
“As bad as Liverpool were, they stood up to all that stuff,” said the Man United legend.
“I love football because of the physicality, but these Newcastle lads are getting stuck in and appealing for every decision and ironically one gets sent off, two go off injured, so Liverpool also stood up to that side of it, that’s why I give them credit.”
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“They wrestled back to win the game, at 2-2 they could have easily said ‘listen lads, it’s been a bad night, we’ve thrown it away, we’ll take the point and move on.’ We all felt there was another goal coming, maybe Newcastle feel they should have taken the draw.”
“So, I give again credit to Liverpool,” Keane added.
“The manager put a young kid [Rio Ngumoha] on in a tight game like that and that’s the bravery of the manager.
They’ll improve.”
Keane is absolutely right to highlight how well Liverpool did to come away with a win from St James’ Park without playing well.
Even though Newcastle were down to ten men for a third of the game, the Reds were already on top by the time Anthony Gordon was sent off.
Slot’s team weathered the storm thrown at them and came out the other side in good shape.
Things need to improve, that much is clear, but this game was always going to be a mud fight.