Newcastle United striker Callum Wilson has claimed that Liverpool were lucky to beat them at Anfield last week.
Speaking on The Footballer’s Football Podcast, Wilson had his say on accusations that his team were time-wasting against Liverpool. And he wasn’t happy.
“It’s a professional sport, there’s so much at stake. When a team plays away from home like for example last week, people were saying Newcastle were time wasting, this and that. You’re playing away from home at Anfield, so slowing the game down, yeah it’s not got the Anfield crowd all singing, dancing cheering away, but that’s what we want.
“We want them quiet we want them sitting down, not giving their team anything and us just popping the ball around,” said the England striker.
“We were not messing around at Anfield, the goalkeeper would catch it, go down, this and that. The referee puts up six minutes. At five minutes 59 he better get his whistle ready to blow. When we have that in our situation and it’s four minutes, I’m thinking three minutes 30 the whistle’s going sometimes, that’s uncalled for.
“If that was the other way around and we were the home team, we wouldn’t have got eight minutes, No chance. Because it’s Anfield, you’re putting up eight minutes and we lose the game because of it. Bull____.
“When the ball was in play we weren’t wasting time. Joelinton at the end of the game could have potentially gone into the corner, started wasting time, he crossed the ball into the box trying to score the winner. That shows our mentality. I just think Liverpool were not playing the greatest, fans were a little bit sore. You’re lucky I wasn’t playing. It would’ve been a problem.”
Wilson misses the point
This is quite some take from Wilson. For anyone watching the game last Wednesday, Newcastle’s time-wasting tactics were clear from the very first minute.
It almost worked, too. But quite fairly enough, referee Andre Marriner added time on to added time for several incidents at the end of the game.
Perhaps in that respect Wilson should rephrase here. Newcastle didn’t lose the game because of the time added on, they lost the game because of Nick Pope and Joelinton’s repeated stoppages.
He’s right in one sense, though. It’s rare that you see referees treat these false injuries in the way they should.
Instead of adding time on for a stop in play, officials tend to operate a ‘anything goes’ policy during injury time. No matter the stoppages during the added-on time, they’ll blow the final whistle without taking them into account.
It was refreshing to see Marriner do the opposite of that last week.
Without the extra period, Liverpool wouldn’t have scored, that much is true. But had the ball been in-play for more of the actual game, perhaps they would have found the net then instead.
Either way, Liverpool ran out deserving winners against a side who simply couldn’t hold on. Had Wilson actually played in the game, it may have been different – he does have a decent record against Liverpool after all. For now though, spare us the sancitmony.
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