Eddie Howe has admitted he didn’t expect Liverpool’s match-winning goal against Newcastle United to be disallowed despite controversy in the build-up.
Fabian Schar was left injured by a fierce tackle by James Milner, with the Reds playing on as Jordan Henderson picked out Naby Keita, who played a one-two with Diogo Jota before rounding Martin Dubravka and scoring the opening goal.
Newcastle fans were left angered by the decision and booed Andre Marriner for allowing play to go on, despite replays showing Milner had won the ball cleanly. But with Schar remaining down injured, and leaving a gap in defence as a result, Howe was left rueing the decisive incident at St. James’ Park.
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“I haven’t seen it back but my initial reaction was we will be lucky if VAR saves us here,” he admitted to reporters after the game. “It looked an untidy coming together but I couldn’t see if there was a foul on Fabian.
“Obviously he stays down and then we missed him in the heart of our defence as they counter-attacked against us. It’s a disappointing way to lose the game because for the majority of the game, yes they had chances but they didn’t really open us up too many times and Martin made some good saves from distance.
“It was pretty pleasing how we defended generally but that one cost us.”
Yet Howe also admitted Newcastle simply hadn’t been good enough to take points off Liverpool when reflecting on the strength of Jurgen Klopp’s squad, as the German rested Mohamed Salah by starting him on the bench as one of five changes.
“They rotated their team slightly today,” Howe said. “They had quality from the bench, we knew that and that is the standard and the quality of their squad.
“We run them all the way today and it was close but it wasn’t close enough.”
