Premier League title or not - Liverpool have big problems that need solving! Winners and losers as Newcastle lay bare Reds' biggest issues in Carabao Cup final as Arne Slot pays price for lack of rotation while 'big' Dan Burn shows Thomas Tuchel was right to hand him an England call-up

The boy from Blyth, the teenager who lost a finger in a freak accident, the adolescent who had to forge his adulthood in non-league, now the senior pro with a senior England call-up and an everlasting hero to Newcastle. What a week it’s been for Dan Burn.

Thomas Tuchel brought about headlines for the wrong reasons when he decided to include the uncapped 32-year-old in his first squad as Three Lions boss. “He has had a very impressive career and he’s a very solid player,” was the German’s explanation. "He’s a very solid defender and a leader in the group. I have spoken to Dan and it was a very impressive phone call with very impressive messages that made me very comfortable in this call-up that we have picked a top team player that will help us build the right team."

Indeed, Burn provided for his team at both ends at Wembley. It was his towering header that broke the deadlock shortly before half-time. It was his commanding display that kept Liverpool at arm’s length for 95 minutes before Federico Chiesa wriggled free of the Magpies’ shackles.

Today, tomorrow, forever, Burn is the winner of Newcastle. No one can take that from him. In footballing terms, Tuchel has been vindicated before he’s even taken charge of a match. They all laughed at him, but they’re not laughing now. Roll on the international window.

It feels wrong criticising Mohamed Salah given everything he's done for Liverpool this season. Put quite simply: the Reds wouldn't be 12 points clear at the top of the Premier League without their Egyptian King, who's putting together arguably the finest individual campaign we've seen since Thierry Henry's heyday.

However, the game's greatest players are judged by the highest of standards, and there's simply no hiding the fact that Liverpool's talisman went missing twice in the same week. After being once again pocketed by PSG full-back Nuno Mendes on Tuesday night, Salah also failed to show up against Newcastle.

Perhaps we shouldn't have been too surprised. The winger has a poor record at Wembley - it's now one goal in EIGHT appearances at the home of English football - but it was still staggering to see Salah fail to register a single shot over the course of the 90 minutes for the first time in his Reds career.

One imagines that whatever hope Salah had of winning the Ballon d'Or is now over after his - and Liverpool's - week from hell, but Slot needs his star man to rediscover his spark immediately after the international break because the league is not yet won, particularly with the leaders looking emotionally and physically drained after a second shattering setback in five days.

When Newcastle spent a club-record £63m to sign Alexander Isak from Real Sociedad in 2022, it was considered a bit of an overpay. He had just come off a year in which he scored merely six goals in La Liga, and though he was heavily linked with Arsenal for months, the Gunners plumped for Gabriel Jesus instead.

Nearly three years on, and everyone associated with the Magpies will consider that a bargain worth paying a hundred times over. Isak has been the face of Newcastle’s season to this point, and it was only fitting that he got in on the act with a goal - and several iconic images in the aftermath - to boot.

Virgil van Dijk, the Player of the Match in the 2024 final against Chelsea, appeared to have had the Swede’s number in the first half, winning essentially every duel and clearing every ball that came his way. But out of the blocks for the second half, Isak looked reborn. There was an extra oomph in his step, the eyes of a man who knew his moment was to come.

Isak had the ball in the net twice. Firstly, he was denied by an offside flag having turned a loose ball over the line following a corner, only for captain Bruno Guimaraes to be penalised for offside. Nothing would stop Isak at the second attempt, however. Andy Robertson was targeted by high balls and crosses all day long, and the resistance eventually broke when Tino Livramento’s delivery to that side was met by Jacob Murphy. There stood Isak, a couple of crucial yards free of Van Dijk and Ibrahima Konate, to turn home with precision, right in the side of the net away from Caoimhin Kelleher.

Someday, up may go an Isak statue, a smirk widening over his face and his thumb pointing backwards at the mess he’s left defenders in. In the not-too-distant future, Newcastle must bat away offers from other clubs who will try and pry him away. He’s their best striker since the great Alan Shearer, and this doesn’t have to be the end of his legend, rather the start for a new era in a more competitive English landscape.

Just like Salah, Slot has worked wonders this season. With essentially the same squad as Jurgen Klopp, he's put Liverpool in an incredible position to win what would be just their second Premier League title - and has received plenty of plaudits as a result. However, the Dutchman undoubtedly made some mistakes on Sunday.

Slot's distrust of Darwin Nunez is obviously understandable, but the decision to persist with Diogo Jota up front was ill-advised at best. The Portuguese has just not looked right since returning from his latest injury lay-off and, after a poor performance against PSG, it was a genuine surprise to see Jota chosen to lead the line at Wembley.

The wisdom of persisting with his preferred midfield trio of Ryan Gravenberch, Alexis Mac Allister and Dominik Szoboszlai also has to be questioned, given each one of them appears to be running on empty. Surely, it would have made more sense to inject some much-needed vitality into the engine room by recalling Jones, who made a positive impact when he came on?

Slot also needs to explain exactly why he's been so reluctant to use Chiesa, who gave Liverpool a flicker of hope with his injury-time goal. The Italian's injury issues are well-known, but he surely deserves more game time - particularly as so many of Liverpool's forwards are toiling either physically or mentally right now.

Of course, the title is still there for the taking for Slot and his players. But there is still work to be done, and the coach definitely has a job on his hands lifting a team running worryingly low on energy at the worst possible time. Because just sticking with his tried-and-trusted starting line-up is clearly not going to cut it anymore, as both Newcastle and PSG have proven.

Eddie Howe claimed he had not been interviewed by the Football Association prior to Tuchel’s unveiling as England boss back in October, despite being the obvious and outstanding homegrown candidate.

“England have to do what is right for them and only they will know the processes they have gone through and the decisions they have made. I am certainly not the type of person that is going to analyse that. For me, it's about Newcastle and trying to win games and it's hard enough to do that if you are 100 percent focused, and I will always remain that way to my work. If you drop your levels, then the job becomes impossible and at no stage have I allowed myself to do that.”

Should Tuchel walk away from the Three Lions hot-seat when his initial contract comes to an end in 2026, then Howe must be the man England offer the car keys to. At a time where English coaching seems lightyears behind the rest of the world, he has constructed a tactically-flexible team of winners, one totally different to the type of side he built down at Bournemouth to rise from League Two to the Premier League.

Howe has become the first English manager since Harry Redknapp in 2008 to win a major domestic trophy in this country, the first since Steve McClaren in 2004 to take home the League Cup. Back then, English managers in the top flight were far more commonplace, but Howe is now the last of a dying breed, and he ought to be rewarded with the country’s top job one day.

For now, Howe can enjoy the luxury of being the first man in 70 years to steer Newcastle to a major domestic trophy. No matter how his story on Tyneside ends, he will always be the one who brought black-and-white hearts success in the colour TV era.

Liverpool may be running away with the Premier League, but the past week has made it painfully obvious that Slot's squad is in dire need of strengthening this summer. One could easily argue, in fact, that sporting directord Richard Hughes didn't do enough at the start of the season to provide the former Feyenoord coach with sufficient alternatives to avoid running his most important players into the ground.

The failure to sign a specialist No.6 is now being keenly felt, with the overused Gravenberch looking utterly exhausted, meaning Liverpool are no longer controlling games as effectively as they did during the first half of the season.

It's also clear that another centre-back should have been signed before the start of the campaign as Ibrahima Konate continues to look like an accident waiting to happen - especially now that he's also struggling fitness-wise. The crazy thing is that Liverpool might not merely need to sign a defender capable of playing alongside Virgil van Dijk. They may actually need an immediate replacement for the club captain, as his contract is up at the end of the season - along with those of Salah and Trent Alexander-Arnold.

There's a very real chance that all three could leave at the end of the current campaign, meaning a title-winning team would need to be almost completely rebuilt, which is not a good look at all for Hughes and those above him. Indeed, it's hard to avoid the suspicion that Slot's Liverpool are winning the league in spite of Hughes rather than because of him, so negligible has his impact been on the playing squad.

Newcastle-upon-Tyne officially has a population of slightly over 300,000. The city must have been a ghost town on Sunday as it felt as if they had all descended on London for Sunday’s cup final in the suburb of Wembley, and they shall return home - whenever that may be, almost certainly hungover all the while - without regret.

Two years ago, the Magpies fell at this hurdle, losing 2-0 to Manchester United in an uncompetitive final. Sure, it was a grand day out for the Geordies, but it ended in defeat and with the want of more. Why should the good times be reserved only for pre-match, right?

The half of Wembley draped in black-and-white were vociferous even way before kick-off, getting to their seats early to drum up the atmosphere. They never quietened all through the 100 minutes or so of football that was played before them. You could feel their desperation and belief in equal amount. Confirmation bias would have you believe that flowed onto the pitch and into their players, which does seem more and more plausible upon extended reflection.

Howe asserted pre-match that he did not subscribe to the Geordie notion of a curse. “I don’t subscribe to that way of thinking. There isn’t always a negative outcome. There are examples where we have been really successful and even getting to the final isn’t a given. They are very difficult to get there. Destiny is in our own hands.”

If there really was a curse, it has emphatically been lifted for good. Newcastle supporters’ dreams have come true. Their boys, their team won the cup. Seventy long, long years had passed since the city was last able to celebrate a major domestic trophy. They will never forget this feeling, and you suspect they won’t have to wait another several generations to get their hands on more silverware.