'I was trying to win': Eddie Howe dismisses talk of selection mind games with another Liverpool meeting in two weeks

Newcastle United and Liverpool played out their first of two meetings in three weeks last night at Anfield which went the way pretty much everybody expected.

Not even the most delusional Newcastle fan really gave the Magpies much of a shot last night with the club's abysmal record at Anfield now stretching on for another year.

That gave fans the chance to voice a conspiracy theory that Eddie Howe would put out a changed side just to mess with Arne Slot's head and keep him guessing ahead of the Carabao Cup final next month.

There's always a chance that could have been the case, but Eddie Howe is far too professional and focused on winning to actually do that.

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Eddie Howe dismissed talk of trying to play mind games with Arne Slot

We can't imagine a world where Eddie Howe would send out a team without the expressed goal of winning, and the man himself rubbished the claims that he was playing games in his post-match presser last night (via The Chronicle).

"It was all about trying to win this game, there was no withholding of cards to try to play games.

"It was trying to win on the night. We felt we had to do something different with the team we had available – let’s see what we do in the final.

"Without going into too many details, it was difficult to ask Callum to play on his own. We wanted to try to get him some support and help, and also to try to be competitive in the game.

"We wanted to ask Liverpool some questions, so to try to play with two players up there didn’t harm us defensively, and I thought it gave us a twin attack. There were some really dangerous counter-attack moments in the game, but they were situations that we didn’t make the most of."

Eddie Howe was missing three big players last night

With Alexander Isak, Sven Botman and Joelinton all sidelined for last night's match but expected back for the Wembley fixture, the Newcastle side that took the field last night is likely to be very different to the one that steps out at Wembley.

That's not Eddie Howe playing mind games, that's just Eddie Howe using what's available at the time.

Hopefully, with those three big players back, the outcome on 16th March will be very, very different.