The Liverpool-Newcastle rivalry has entered a new era

It is a fixture synonymous with the drama and entertainment of the Premier League, a match that once encapsulated everything that helped establish football’s most popular domestic competition.

Newcastle United versus Liverpool was not a rivalry as such – the two clubs had last been on a level footing way back into the 1970s – but it caught the zeitgeist of early era Premier League.

Liverpool, for so long the pre-eminent force in English and European club football, were in decline; a fading force, who had been overtaken by Manchester United and were in the formative years of a three decade-long wait to be champions of England once more.

Newcastle, by contrast, were on the rise. After so long an irrelevance in the national football conversation, as they bounced between top and second tier, their promotion to the newly-formed Premier League in 1993 captured the imagination of football’s new and expanding audiences.

Under former Liverpool player Kevin Keegan they were “The Entertainers”, a big-spending, ambitious and extremely confident football club, with a team that played the most exciting, attacking and brave football in the division.

It was football without brakes; the ultimate “we will score one more goal than you” philosophy. They were all in. They did not win anything, but they won hearts and minds.

This was what Newcastle’s current manager Eddie Howe thought of when he applied for the job back in 2021. Now aged 47, it was Keegan’s Newcastle that tugged at his heart strings; the Newcastle he had watched as a teenager.

For that generation, Newcastle’s games against Liverpool epitomised the new swagger of English football: high-scoring and highly entertaining. The aristocrats of the English game against the nouveaux riches. We lapped it up, the two successive 4-3 games – both won by Liverpool – going a long way to costing Newcastle the title.

One was named the greatest Premier League game of the 1990s, with the image of Keegan slumped over the advertising hoardings, as Liverpool scored a late winner, etched into history.

Newcastle should have shut up shop and held on for a point at Anfield. Instead, they kept on attacking, looking for a winner. Romanticism over pragmatism, that was the Keegan way.

Newcastle burned hot, but quickly faded. Liverpool, even when unable to win the league, continued to win trophies under Gérard Houllier and Rafa Benítez.

Newcastle faded into the background and, under Mike Ashley’s ownership between 2009 and 2021, back into irrelevance. Liverpool barely noticed them, unless they were buying their players. For Peter Beardsley in 1987, read Andy Carroll in 2011 or Georginio Wijnaldum in 2016.

There was no rivalry to speak of. Liverpool, as they had been in the 1970s and 80s, were competing and operating on a different level.

That changed in October 2021 when Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) took a controlling stake in Newcastle. A month later, Howe was appointed manager. What has followed in the four years since, has been a rapid ascension from relegation battlers to Champions League contenders and trophy winners.

Newcastle’s victory over Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final in March was the culmination of a plan, devised by Howe and the ownership when he took the job.

For the second time in three years, Newcastle will be playing in the Champions League this season and are, as they were under Keegan and briefly under Sir Bobby Robson, a clear and present danger to the “Big Six”.

We must be careful not to create fake rivalries in football and avoid conflating healthy competition with conflict, but there is no doubt Liverpool have been rattled by Newcastle’s surge.

It started under former Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp, who perceived the arrival of another club owned by an oil state, following the dramatic transformations of Manchester City and Paris St-Germain, as a danger. He took pot shots at them in press conferences, scolding Newcastle’s former sporting director, Dan Ashworth, for opining there was “no ceiling” on the club’s ambition under PIF.

Klopp, preaching to his disciples, argued Liverpool did have a ceiling and could not spend as much money under their owners Fenway Sports Group.

Given the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules (PSR), combined with the new ones brought in to curb associated party sponsorship deals immediately after the Newcastle takeover, were in put in place specifically to prevent Newcastle spending their owner’s money in the same way City and Chelsea had done before them, the jibe struck a nerve on Tyneside.

There was tension too on the touchline. Relations between Klopp, Howe and his assistant Jason Tindall, were fractious.

There was a lot of bickering when the teams played each other. It was Klopp, sources have told Telegraph Sport, who prompted Howe’s infamous statement that his Newcastle team were there to compete, not be liked.

Liverpool remained the superior side – Newcastle’s Carabao Cup win was the first time Howe had beaten them as Newcastle manager – but there is no doubt a new era had begun.

Which brings us to the here and now. When Newcastle entertain Liverpool at St James’ Park, they will do so fuelled by a mixture of anger and defiance. It will be a molten cauldron under the lights and the rest of the country, as they once did in the 90s, will be transfixed.

There is bitterness and acrimony. Although Klopp’s successor, Arne Slot, has been nothing but respectful in the way he has spoken about Newcastle, and particularly Howe, tension over transfers has cranked things up. What better way to deal with a new, emerging threat than weaken them by signing their best players.

Of all of the 19 transfers between Newcastle and Liverpool, none have created the sort of animosity that the latter’s attempt to sign Alexander Isak has done this summer.

Last year, Liverpool were interested in signing Anthony Gordon, a boyhood Liverpool fan. With Newcastle in danger of a PSR breach in June, the board was desperate. Talks over the sale of Gordon were instigated by Newcastle, but a bid was never made. Newcastle solved their issues and when Liverpool returned later that summer, their approach was firmly rebuffed.

Gordon, though, had been affected. He wanted to sign for the club he had supported as a boy. His head had been turned. Gordon was not the same player last season as the hangover from that disappointment lingered.

Fast forward 12 months and it has been all about Isak. A transfer saga that began on social media, with the new breed of transfer experts whipping things up, gradually filtered into the mainstream media in mid July, when a rather strange story appeared saying Liverpool had let Newcastle know they would be willing to pay £120m for Isak if they were willing to let him leave.

Newcastle had maintained all year that Isak’s asking price would be in excess of £150m and were adamant the Sweden international was not for sale. The asking price was specifically designed to send that message – which came directly from PIF.

In the background, though, Liverpool knew Isak wanted to go and wanted to play for them. Newcastle remained defiant, they had, as they always planned, dug in and resisted.

What has transpired since is a complete breakdown in the player’s relationship with his employer as Isak continues to demand that he is allowed to leave.

After a bid of £110m was rejected almost a month ago, Liverpool backed off given the ferocity of Newcastle’s rejection, but Isak and his agent have done everything in their power to force his way out since.

The forward is currently on strike, refusing to play and even released a statement last week in which he claimed promises had been broken and it was in the best interests of everyone to let him go. Newcastle responded quickly, denying any promises were made and, to all extents and purposes, ruled out a transfer in this window. The statement was led by PIF.

From a Liverpool perspective, they have done nothing wrong, other than bid for a player they admire, who they know wants to play for them.

They are, sources have stressed, perfectly entitled to make a bid reflecting their own interpretation of his worth and fair market value. Newcastle are, in turn, entitled to reject it. It is not conflict, it is merely the business of football.

Newcastle, at least privately, perceive things rather differently. They feel Liverpool have deliberately unsettled their player and the agent has, with their tacit support, encouraged Isak to behave appallingly in order to force them to sell well below their valuation. Liverpool deny they have done any such thing.

Newcastle still believe it is an attempt to bully them into doing something they have never intended to do this summer – sell Isak on the cheap, severely weakening themselves and directly strengthening a club they now see as a rival.

After all, if Liverpool had really backed off, would Isak still be clinging on to the idea the move can happen before deadline day?

This is the backdrop to Newcastle playing Liverpool on Monday night. Isak will not be involved, Newcastle will be considerably weaker on the pitch as a result. He has burned so many bridges, the path to redemption on Tyneside is a hugely difficult one. He has insulted the club he still plays for and the manager who helped turn him into one of Europe’s best strikers.

Howe’s side will also have to face the player, Hugo Ekitike, they tried to sign to play alongside Isak this season. It is one of the strange quirks of this drama that, had Ekitike signed for Newcastle in July, they may well have been more open to letting Isak leave for Liverpool, especially if they had offered something close to £150m.
 

Tensions are high, accusations have been made and countered. Isak remains a Newcastle player but his head and heart are no longer in it. By digging in and resisting, Newcastle have stood up to Liverpool and the idea of player power, but they have undoubtedly been damaged by the whole affair. Howe described it as a lose-lose situation on Friday. If they sold Isak they would be weaker but keeping an unhappy and unmotivated player carries huge risks too.

Those emotions will be unleashed at St James’ Park. Rightly or wrongly, Newcastle supporters blame Liverpool for creating the mess Howe and the Newcastle board have been trying to clear up all summer.

The drama and excitement is back and Newcastle versus Liverpool has moved into a new era of competition. Sit back and enjoy it.