Oh lord, won’t you give us, an entertaining game?

Given the participants, we shouldn’t count on it! Newcastle aren’t very good; Liverpool are very good; you already knew all of that. Perhaps, then, the way to look at this match — the way to convince yourself that what we’re about to see could conceivably be classified as “interesting” — is as a chance to show that what happened to Liverpool against West Brom was a blip rather than a burgeoning problem.

While Steve Bruce’s team isn’t objectively relegation-quality — only the fourth-worst expected-goal differential in the league, per Stats Perform — they’re the most passive team team in England not named “West Brom”. Only the Baggies take fewer shots, control less possession, and complete fewer passes into the penalty area, and no one presses less aggressively than than Magpies, who rank last in the league in PPDA. And only Tottenham — eek! — have a worse margin of final-third turnovers, or “possessions lost in the defensive third minus possessions won in the attacking third”. For the most part, you can expect teams that don’t have much of the ball anywhere on the field to at least counter-attack at speed, but Newcastle don’t really do that, either, as the pace of their average possession (meters per second the ball moves up the field) is roughly league-average. They’re barely doing anything, and it’s just enough to get by.

Liverpool, meanwhile, rank first in final-third turnover margin and in passes into the penalty area and in expected goals per match. Yet, they only generated a single-shot on target against West Brom over the weekend. Breaking down teams that don’t want to attack used to be a big problem for Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool; we’ll see if it still is today. Kick off is at 3 PM EST. See you soon.