Newcastle’s strong-arm response to Liverpool’s attempt to take their best player started a few hours before kick-off, on a leafy residential street in Northumberland.
If that meeting between the club’s top brass and Alexander Isak at the striker’s home was meant to be hush-hush, there was nothing discrete about what lay in wait at St James’ Park.
‘Get into them’ was the instruction of the Wor Flags banner in the East Stand, like a bugle call before the charge. And so, Newcastle did. They got into them, up them and around them. The home side were never going to park the bus against the country’s best team - instead, they tried to hit the visitors with a black-and-white fleet of them.