Pope sent off for Newcastle as Núñez and Gakpo score in Liverpool’s victory

As dress rehearsals go it could hardly have been worse for Newcastle. Eight days before their long awaited League Cup final date with Manchester United Eddie Howe’s team not merely lost a Premier League game for only the second time this season but had Nick Pope sent off.

Newcastle remain fourth but Liverpool, who beat them at Anfield in August, are now only six points and four places behind with a game in hand. Not that such encouraging statistics necessarily mean Jürgen Klopp’s side are exactly renascent, let alone set to win the race for Champions League qualification.

Perhaps significantly there were long periods when the visitors and prolonged possession appeared strangers and their pressing was much more Euro-pop than heavy metal.

Tragically this was the day the music stopped for one north east based family and it all began with a minute’s heartfelt applause for the former Newcastle, and Ghana winger Christian Atsu who died in the Turkey-Syria earthquake. Atsu’s widow, Marie-Claire Rupio had brought their three children to the ground and they witnessed an outpouring of emotion from Newcastle’s fans, players and backroom staff which emphasised precisely how much loved a 31-year-old described as “a beautiful person” by his final club, Hatayspor, was on Tyneside.

Atsu experienced some tough battles with Liverpool defenders during five years at St James’ Park and his old friends were soon up against it here when Trent Alexander-Arnold’s incisive 12th-minute through ball prefaced Darwin Núñez shooting, right footed, beyond Pope.

There was a suspicion of handball about the manner in which Núñez controlled Alexander-Arnold’s dropping delivery but a VAR review found no rule infringements and the goal stood.

Five minutes