Brought together as one to celebrate the life of Kevin Keegan, there was no love lost as soon as the whistle was blown, with another striker to have donned the black and white of Newcastle United and the red of Liverpool taking centre stage.
Alexander Isak’s first match at St James’ Park as an opposition player was arguably the biggest narrative going into a huge Premier League match absolutely overflowing with storylines.
Both Liverpool and Newcastle are going through rebuilds, transitions of different scales, but the team seemingly facing the more uphill task to find stability and enjoy a prosperous season were not showing it.
The Magpies took the lead only five minutes into a game most expected them to lose, as another Swede outshone the one branded a ‘rat’ by the home support on a most unwelcome return to his former stomping ground.
Anthony Elanga’s pace was as frightening as we remember it being from his Nottingham Forest days as he burst beyond Milos Kerkez – made to look like a slug – to latch onto William Osula’s perfect through ball and slot low and hard across Alisson Becker.
It’s amazing how quickly the narrative can change in football. In the build-up to this game and throughout Newcastle’s pre-season preparations, people were discussing them as relegation candidates after losing several key players and their manager.
Depending on how results go, you either have no experience and are destined to fail, or you have an exciting young squad entering a new, successful era.
By half-time, with the home side 1-0 up and purring, Matthias Jaissle and his young Newcastle team were very much the latter.
But the Liverpool narrative has hardly been positive either, amid concerns over their squad depth and how well suited they are to Andoni Iraolaball. If there is a lingering fear that they will burn out after 70 minutes, they have to come out of the traps quickly, but they absolutely did not at a rocking St James’ Park.
The Reds do not have a deep enough squad to win the Premier League and, without Hugo Ekitike, there are doubts over their firepower, with the signing of Bradley Barcola looking even more necessary now that a competitive ball has been kicked – if he truly is as good as the €150million Paris Saint-Germain believe he is worth.
Cody Gakpo on the left was his usual predictable self but might’ve taken the Tottenham transfer links to heart, promising Iraola and Milos Kerkez that he can change for the better, actually passing the ball to the Hungarian and acknowledging his bursting runs down the left to produce some decent link-up play.
He also scored a fantastic equaliser after the break in a game that showed him at his scintillating best and frustrating worst.
Whether or not Gakpo is a potential world-beater was one of many questions we were left asking ourselves, like: can this Liverpool team play Iraolaball? How many signings does Iraola need? Is it really as bad at Newcastle as we all thought? And just how would Newcastle throw this one away, just as they always do at home to Liverpool?
Nick Pope’s red card was disastrous, Darwin Nunez’s brace for 10-man Liverpool stung, but both were outdone by Rio Ngumoha’s winner in 90+10 last season.
Every season Newcastle find a new way to completely f*** it when Liverpool come to town and this time, it was via a last-gasp penalty, albeit scored a whole minute earlier than Ngumoha’s winner last year, and at least it was only an equaliser.
A penalty given away by the brilliant Lewis Hall was scored emphatically by Dominik Szoboszlai, the new designated spot-kick taker now Mohamed Salah is gone, which happened to deny us an all-time Premier League moment.
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Even if there is a penalty hierarchy, we simply cannot believe Alexander Isak did not step up to take that injury-time penalty. What a bottleless so-and-so he is. Ugh.
On the brink of a stinker that would have fed Newcastle families for months, he could have stepped up, scored, told the crowd to shh and triggered a full-scale war in the north east.
It was not Isak who scored Liverpool’s equaliser, which would have been impossible for Newcastle to outdo in future fixtures, but it was still a pretty damn tough way to throw away what would have been an incredible win.
There were still some huge success stories to come out of Newcastle’s performance. Maybe it’s not as bad as we all feared. Elanga and Osula were brilliant, Joe Willock scored an incredible goal that was so nearly the winner, and Yoane Wissa put in his absolute best performance in a Newcastle shirt.
The bar was set extremely low by Wissa last season, but he was superb, driving with the ball to assist Willock’s strike and putting everything into ensuring the home fans went home happy.
They will not be going home happy after the latest c*ck-up against Liverpool, but it was still a performance to be proud of, and there is plenty of reason to be excited for a season that many people – both outside and in – felt could result in relegation.
Ironically, a superb result and performance against Coventry, for example, on matchday one would’ve been met with caution as it’s ‘only Coventry’, yet Newcastle will not be playing title hopefuls every week, with the new inferiority complex clearly suiting this group of players and their manager.
Tougher tests don’t quite await, but very different tests do, and while positive results against your Liverpools of the Premier League is rather fantastic, there will be matches in which Newcastle are expected to dominate possession. How Jaissle gets the best out of Wissa and Elanga in those games will be intriguing.
Still, questions linger over the long-term projects at both Liverpool and Newcastle, with one draw for the latter not enough to convince everyone that things will be rosy, and a draw for the former hardly indicating that appointing Iraola was a mistake.
But there is certainly more optimism in the north east than there was before kick-off. It’s not all doom and gloom, folks. Who knew? ‘Cos we certainly didn’t.
And at least Isak didn’t score… the bloody bottle merchant.