OPINION
Steve Bruce and the majority of his Newcastle United players will have left Anfield on Saturday afternoon with their heads held high.
It all started so well for the Magpies who took the lead early on in Merseyside after Jetro Willems cut onto his right foot on the edge of the box and fired an unstoppable drive into the top corner.
That quickly came falling down though as two goals from Sadio Mane and one from Mohamed Salah saw Newcastle fall to a respectable 3-1 defeat.
It was the second goal that Bruce will not have been happy with, and keeper Martin Dubravka will certainly not make any positive headlines over the weekend for his role.
The Slovakian international was indecisive as Roberto Firmino played in a ball that he should have dealt with, and his failure to do so led to Mane having a simple tap in.
Despite being one of their standout performers in the past couple of seasons, many Newcastle fans took to Twitter to slam the performance of their keeper with one calling his mistake inexcusable.
Whilst Dubravka struggled, another Newcastle keeper that continued to excel was Freddie Woodman, who impressed once again whilst on loan at Swansea City.
Even though the Welsh side fell to their first defeat of the season at home against Nottingham Forest, the young stopper was voted as the man of the match in a poll on the club’s official Twitter account.
Dubravka will surely be looking over his shoulder at the pecking order at St James’ Park, with Woodman surely doing himself a lot of favours if he continues to impress.
The 30-year-old is yet to keep a clean sheet this season and has been poor in possession for his club, only finding his intended target 43.1% of times in games according to WhoScored.
Should Woodman continue with his form in the Championship, Dubravka will certainly start looking over his shoulder.
