Liverpool salvages a point at St. James' Park with stoppage-time penalty

It started to look like an ambush and ended with a 95th-minute penalty that handed Liverpool a point that seemed to be slipping away. Newcastle United controlled long stretches of the match at St. James' Park, but the final 2-2 came thanks to a penalty converted in stoppage time, after Lewis Hall brought down Victor Munoz inside the box.

Newcastle struck almost immediately. In the 4th minute, Anthony Elanga finished low, just inside the left post, after a counterattack set up by William Osula. That 1-0 held until halftime even though Liverpool piled up chances through Florian Wirtz, Virgil van Dijk and Cody Gakpo, unable to convert any of them.

The second half opened with a whirlwind of goals in barely two minutes. In the 54th minute, Gakpo leveled things with a shot from outside the box, assisted by Ryan Gravenberch, making it 1-1. But Liverpool's joy didn't last long: two minutes later, in the 56th minute, Joe Willock, who had just come on, restored Newcastle's lead with a shot from outside the area following a counterattack set up by Yoane Wissa, for 2-1.

Newcastle held onto that lead for more than half an hour, weathering a Liverpool siege that pushed more players forward and kept firing shots. Alexander Isak tested the keeper with a couple of headers, Dominik Szoboszlai kept trying from outside the box and Van Dijk rattled one off the frame near the top corner, but the score stayed put until stoppage time. Then, in the 95th minute, with the match all but over, came the penalty on Victor Munoz that Liverpool converted to make it a final 2-2.

The numbers behind the result

The stats tell a story of visiting dominance that the scoreboard didn't fully reflect. Liverpool controlled possession and out-shot Newcastle by a wide margin, though it had to wait until the very end to cash in on that edge.

The xG calculated after the fact from the match's shots backs up that reading: 1.16 for Newcastle against 4.45 for Liverpool. This is our own estimate, not an official figure, but it makes clear that the visitors created far more danger than the scoreline suggested, and that Newcastle was clinical with the little it had.

The comparison with our pre-match projections is also worth noting. Beforehand, we gave Newcastle a 39% chance of winning, 25% for a draw and 36% for Liverpool, with expected goals of 1.76 for the home side and 1.67 for the visitors. The draw ended up being the outcome, though the path there looked nothing like the expected script: Newcastle struck twice on the counter and Liverpool had to manufacture its equalizer through sheer persistence and a penalty that arrived almost with the final whistle.

What the draw leaves behind

In the Premier League, this result leaves both sides with a point after the opening matchday: Liverpool in ninth place and Newcastle in tenth, both with a draw as their only result so far. For Newcastle, there's the feeling of having held the lead until the last gasp; for Liverpool, the relief of salvaging a point on a pitch where the scoreboard worked against them for nearly the entire match.