Newcastle United boss Eddie Howe proudly proclaimed that his side was the deserved victor in the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool — though he did admit that he was surprised at how well the set-piece move that led to the opening goal played out.
“I am very, very emotional and have been all day, which is unlike me,” Howe said during his post-game press conference. “We knew what was at stake today for all of our fans, we wanted to do them proud and win the trophy.
“I am so, so pleased with the result and the performance — we deserved to win today. It was tough when Liverpool scored. I was thinking about extra time. We always make it difficult for ourselves and it was never going to be 2-0.”
“We were well aware of the history and we wanted to do the club proud. We wanted to score, we wanted to perform and we wanted to win. We are breaking new ground, I thought we were magnificent today.”
For the first time in 70 years, Newcastle has won a domestic trophy, ending the drought. And while Howe is keen to press on with the rest of the season, he also admitted he would take some time to let it soak in.
“We worked consistently for two weeks on set plays just for this game, and if you had seen us in practice you would have said we had no chance,” Howe admitted. “We couldn’t believe Dan Burn scored — he didn’t train like that! He was a colossus for us.”
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“I want to enjoy it first. I am always about tomorrow but I’ll put the coaching books away for a few days,” Howe added.
“Both teams were quite direct and we dealt with that really well. Nobody wanted to make a mistake. There wasn’t much pretty football played but we were effective in both boxes.
“We didn’t want to show our hand when we played them a few weeks ago. We still wanted to win that game — we just did it in a different way.”
Liverpool.com says: There is no doubt that Newcastle was the deserved winner on the day. The Magpies battled harder and won their duels, while Liverpool looked jaded and fatigued. Arne Slot’s side didn’t show up while it was the biggest day of many of Newcastle’s players’ lives. That combination was only ever going to end one way.
