'Take him to the cleaners': Stephen Warnock points out obvious missed opportunity for Newcastle United against Liverpool

Eddie Howe played around with his tactics again last night as he looked for a way to get his Newcastle United side a fighting chance against Liverpool.

While his team selection suggested the usual 4-3-3 we've become accustomed to under Howe, the actual shape of the team suggested more of a 4-4-1-1 with Anthony Gordon playing in behind Callum Wilson.

The idea behind it seemingly was to pack the midfield more to give themselves more of a fighting chance in the middle of the park against Liverpool's three-man midfield.

To be fair, the game was mostly played in the midfield and it was a move that made sense to a degree, but there was one glaringly obvious issue with it that the NUFC Feed crew had been saying throughout the game - mostly Rich the tactics nut if I'm being honest, but it turns out that Stephen Warnock agreed with our stat man.

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Stephen Warnock said what we were all thinking

Speaking on Match of the Day last night, the former Liverpool man spoke about the tactical shift but also mentioned how he couldn't get over why Anthony Gordon wasn't deployed on the left to torment Trent Alexander-Arnold.

"They tried a little bit of a different approach tonight. They went with [Callum Wilson] up front, Gordon just off him and tried to pack the midfield with four and go against Liverpool's three. But what you've got to do when you go to Anfield is you've got to have an outlet. You've got to have players who are going to play out wide and stretch the pitch because Trent Alexander-Arnold will wander up the field or wander inside, and [Konstantinos] Tsimikas will go down that left-hand side. You've got to have an outlet.

"We were just saying, why not go one-v-one against Trent? Anthony Gordon has had a field day against him many times. Take him to the cleaners as much as you can, keep running at him and Tsimikas on that left-hand side as well."

Was last night a case of experimentation for Eddie Howe to find weak spots for Wembley

We (Rich, mostly) couldn't believe that Gordon wasn't sent out to run at Trent. We said in the lead-up to the game that Alexander-Arnold's defensively shaky and that Gordon could have some fun against him (not Rich that time; that was me), so if two fans can see how that would have worked, why didn't Eddie and his team of professionals?

With Alexander Isak missing, we're sure that this was probably Plan F for Eddie Howe, and there's probably a bit of mind games involved when it comes to not showing his hand for his tactics when we meet again at Wembley which we expect will be different again.

A lot of fans saw last night as a 'free hit'. We weren't expecting to win, and win we did not. But next month, at Wembley, we will be looking for more of a fight and hopefully, with Isak, Joelinton and Sven Botman back from injury, we'll be better placed to deliver that fight.