Dan Burn says that Newcastle United are looking at both Saturday's defeat to Liverpool and Sunday's clash with Manchester City as examinations of how far the Magpies have progressed in 2022.
A narrow loss to the Reds on Saturday saw Newcastle push Jurgen Klopp's side to the end without any rewards. Man City will go into Sunday on the back of a high octane Champions League semi-final away to Real Madrid.
And Burn and his team-mates are relishing the Super Sunday encounter at the Etihad Stadium, he said: "There is no shame in getting beat of Liverpool. "Them and City are probably the best two teams in the world at the moment so that's where we want to be so it was a bit of a measure to see how far away we are.
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"Just their quality, everyone knows and the front three, whoever plays out of the five world class players they've got, can cause teams problems. Diaz is a very special player and was very good.
"They're well organised and they win even when they're not at their best. They probably weren't at their best [on Saturday] but they keep picking up points."
Burn insists that confidence has not even been dented despite the loss to Liverpool. The former Brighton man said: "There's not just confidence in the team but the stadium as well. [St James' Park] is a nice place to play at the minute with the atmosphere, all the flags and everything, it's class like and I love playing at home. There is no shame in getting beat off Liverpool, we gave them a decent game and we'll go and try and affect City next weekend.
"The atmosphere in the dressing room was a bit flat as you'd expect, everyone is positive but no one likes getting beat. It was there for us Saturday, we could have given them more of a problem than we did but they're one of the best teams."
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