Eddie Howe had three strikers sat behind him at Anfield. Two of his own, signed at great expense in the summer but benched in favour of winger Anthony Gordon at centre-forward. Alexander Isak was also there, the one he lost to Liverpool and who is currently injured. But it was the one in front of him, the one he really wanted, who settled this game.
‘I’ve tried to sign him twice,’ said Howe on Friday. ‘He has got a bit of everything. He has great movement, can score with both feet and dribbles really well.’
It was never his intention, but the Newcastle boss had prophesied what was to follow. Not that you needed a crystal ball. Not when all that Hugo Ekitike needs is a football.
For three minutes before half-time, the visitors could not live with him. He scored twice to reverse Gordon’s opener and, in doing so, he as good as killed Newcastle’s spirit and the contest.
When he was later substituted, at 3-1, he fingered the scoreline to the away fans. But perhaps their season hinged on the moment he showed them two fingers in July, when Howe tried to sign him as Isak’s replacement, six weeks before the Swede’s eventual move to Liverpool.
Ekitike chose the Premier League champions instead, rejecting Newcastle for the second time in three years. In the end, Newcastle spent all but £1m of the £125m of Isak’s fee on Nick Woltemade and Yoane Wissa, the pair who were left out here. As a game-plan, it worked, at least until Ekitike intervened.
‘He is someone we are going to have to do really, really well against,’ Howe had said. Well, they didn’t. The 23-year-old was merciless, his goading of Newcastle’s fans coming on the back of his garrotting of their defenders.
For Arne Slot, this win was his side’s first from a losing position this season and first of 2026 in the top-flight.
It was capped by Florian Wirtz’s sixth goal in 10 matches in the second half and a poignant moment for stoppage-time scorer Ibrahima Konate, playing for the first time since the death of his father.
Slot and Howe have shared common ground of late – inconsistency of results apart – and that is a vocal minority of supporters, armed with a keyboard if not a compelling argument, who want change in the dugout.
In Slot’s case, that view lacks appreciation for the triumph of last season and empathy for the trauma of the summer and the death of Diogo Jota. He deserves time to process both emotions and new personnel. This win, and especially the impact of Ekitike and Wirtz, will help.
For Howe, there are parallels. His summer was not marked by tragedy, but he and his team are still absorbing the loss of Isak, evidenced by the selection.
The head coach hinted recently that, after four years in charge, maybe some fans have grown bored. It feels as much like a cousin of boredom – complacency. The misplaced notion that another manager would suddenly resolve the issues that exist in a squad, and season, of transition.
Again, issues all too apparent in the second half as his team, with two injured players on the bench, looked tired in body and mind.
Still, Newcastle had ventured here in hope, and that is a rarity bordering on absurdity given they last won in the league at Anfield in 1994.
It was a belief fuelled by the energy of their 1-1 draw at Paris Saint-Germain in midweek.
Yet, the choice of Gordon ahead of Woltemade and Wissa had the warriors hammering their keys. With the Scouser at No.9 this season, Newcastle had not won and had scored just once from five matches. But Gordon was the nuisance he can be as the Magpies refused to let Liverpool breathe during an opening of intent and intensity.
Harvey Barnes had not long cracked the post from a free-kick when Newcastle took a deserved lead in the 36th minute.
Gordon, speaking in Paris this week, said he had no answer as to why he had not scored from open play in the Premier League in over a year. He found a response when he drilled low across Allison in front of The Kop. He had been the game’s best player. Come half-time, that was Ekitike.
The Frenchman’s first was about instinct, his second opportunism. The equaliser, on 41 minutes, owed much to the bustling endeavour of Wirtz, who barged between two defenders before squaring to the six-yard area, where Ekitike pounced to apply a one-touch poke beyond Nick Pope.
Two minutes later and, with Malick Thiaw inviting him to shoot from what the defender presumed was a narrow angle, Ekitike’s RSVP was delivered into the bottom corner.
From moody groans of irritation, Anfield chorused the name of the player who had turned the game. He is also the one, more than any other, who can turn their season.
Mo Salah then teed up Wirtz for a tidy finish in the 67th minute before Konate turned in from close range.
There were tears for the defender, and Howe must have felt like shedding one too, given the earlier contribution of the player he had courted for so long.
