Szoboszlai penalty rescues Liverpool at Newcastle

The Szoboszlai penalty that ended Newcastle United 2-2 Liverpool was awarded six minutes into stoppage time on Sunday at St James' Park and taken three minutes after that, once a protracted VAR check and a good deal of unhurried Newcastle housekeeping had run their course. Lewis Hall lunged at substitute Victor Munoz inside his own box; referee Stuart Attwell pointed straight to the spot without hesitation.

Szoboszlai then hit it hard and high to the goalkeeper's right. The direction was almost beside the point.

Elanga's fifth minute, and the single pass that made it

Newcastle's first shot of the match was their first goal. Will Osula, left one-against-two with Liverpool's centre-backs, needed a single pass from the edge of his own area to send Anthony Elanga away over the halfway line, and Elanga finished for his first league goal since joining the club.

Five minutes gone. A stadium that had just observed pre-match tributes to Kevin Keegan from all four sides had its afternoon.

The mechanism mattered more than the moment. Liverpool had committed too many bodies forward in the first phase of build-up, and Newcastle's counter did not need a second touch to punish it. Iraola, speaking to Sky Sports afterwards, did not dress it up.

"It's something we've been talking about all week," he said. "We have to finish more plays, we were trying to overdo things in the first phase."

That is a specific complaint, not a general one. Iraola's objection was not that Liverpool pushed men up — his sides always do — but that they kept recycling possession without producing a shot, leaving the rest defence outnumbered every time the ball turned over.

Liverpool did generate chances. Florian Wirtz met a half-cleared Milos Kerkez cross well on 18 minutes and forced a strong stop from Lukas Hornicek; at the other end on 25, Yoane Wissa slid an outside-of-the-boot pass into Osula and Alisson got a toe to it. Both sides looked capable of scoring at will and defending nothing.

Gakpo's leveller lasted three minutes

Liverpool started the second half sharply and were level on 55 minutes, Cody Gakpo driving a low finish from around 20 yards beyond Hornicek. It was the away side's most convincing passage of the match.

It survived 180 seconds.

Jaissle made two changes on 57 minutes, one of them Joe Willock. On 58, Wissa carried the ball past several Liverpool players and squared it, and Willock restored the lead. A substitute's second touch of the afternoon.

Sequence of scoring at St James' Park, Sunday 23 August 2026.

The pattern in that table is the story of the match. Newcastle scored twice from moves that began with a Liverpool turnover in an advanced area, and Liverpool's two goals came from an individual strike and a set-piece restart. One side was building repeatable chances from the other's structural error; the other was improvising.

Wissa was the clearest beneficiary. Given space to run at a back line that had just been stretched by its own attack, he was involved in both Newcastle goals without ever needing to beat a settled defence.

The Szoboszlai penalty, and the ten minutes of nothing before it

Between the hour mark and the 96th minute, Liverpool did not land a meaningful blow. Half-chances were traded, the game got scrappy, and Newcastle managed the clock with the practised patience of a side protecting a one-goal lead at home.

Then Munoz, on as a substitute, got in behind and Hall committed. Attwell gave it immediately. The VAR check that followed was long enough for the temperature at St James' Park to rise considerably, and Newcastle's players used the delay for everything it was worth — a legitimate tactic, and one that has worked on plenty of takers before.

It did not work here. Szoboszlai's contact was clean and the placement was into the top corner, roughly the one area of the goal where a goalkeeper's anticipation stops being useful.

What the point actually changes

• Newcastle turn a first competitive win under a new coach into a first competitive draw, having led for 63 of the 99 minutes played.
• Liverpool avoid a defeat on Iraola's debut, but the manner of it — one goal from open play, one from the spot — will not read as vindication in his notebook.
• Both goals conceded by Liverpool came from the same defensive-transition problem, which makes it a coaching item rather than a personnel one.
• Two substitutes decided the equaliser: Munoz won it, Szoboszlai took it. Jaissle's substitutes had produced the second goal 40 minutes earlier.

Isak's reception, Gakpo's eight days, and Jaissle's "huge challenge"

Alexander Isak returned to St James' Park for the first time since his move, with an uninterrupted pre-season behind him and a considerable amount expected of him. He was booed on every touch and had a poor afternoon by any reading of it. The crowd won that particular contest comfortably.

The irony for Liverpool is that their most dangerous attacker was Gakpo, who may not be at the club in eight days' time. A player being linked away while producing the away side's only goal from open play is not a new situation in a late transfer window, but it does complicate Iraola's planning at exactly the moment he says he wants his structure tightened.

Jaissle, for his part, had already flagged before kick-off that Newcastle still face a "huge challenge" this summer, and a squad that led twice against Liverpool with a front line built around Osula, Elanga and Wissa is both an argument for his methods and a reminder of how thin the margins are. His side adapted to their task faster than the visitors did. They also conceded a penalty in the 96th minute.

Iraola's assessment was blunt enough that it hardly needs decoding: his side looked below the level he is demanding. That is a defensible verdict on a first showing, and it is also the kind of thing a new head coach says when he wants the message to land in the dressing room rather than the press room.

Both clubs leave with a point and the same to-do list they arrived with. Newcastle need to see out the ends of matches; Liverpool need to stop losing the ball where losing it hurts most. The difference is that one of those problems announced itself in the fifth minute and was still there in the 58th, and the other only cost a win in the 96th.