‘Could be a mad game’ – Roy Keane expecting goals aplenty with Liverpool v Newcastle prediction | OneFootball

Roy Keane has given his prediction for Liverpool’s Premier League clash against Newcastle on Saturday night, believing that it has the potential to be a ‘mad game’.

Both teams were in Champions League action on Wednesday, with the Reds thumping Qarabag 6-0 to proceed directly to the round of 16 while the Magpies were consigned to the knockout play-offs despite a creditable 1-1 draw away to holders Paris Saint-Germain.

The two sides played out a thriller at St James’ Park earlier in the season, when Arne Slot’s team threw away a two-goal lead before Rio Ngumoha (still only 16 at the time) came off the bench to score the winner in the 100th minute.

Keane predicting ‘a mad game’ between Liverpool and Newcastle

On the latest episode of Stick to Football, Keane and his fellow pundits were asked to give their predictions for the game at Anfield this coming weekend.

There was a wide cross-section of forecasts made, with Jill Scott immediately backing Liverpool to win but Ian Wright instead giving his vote to Newcastle.

After a brief discussion between that duo and the ex-Manchester United captain, the latter decided to go down the middle as he predicted: “2-2, could be a mad game”.

(Photo by George Wood/Getty Images)

Liverpool v Newcastle is a very hard one to predict with confidence

Keane’s remark about a potentially ‘mad’ encounter at Anfield on Saturday would be in keeping with quite a few meetings between the two clubs in the Premier League era.

The pair of 4-3s in the mid-1990s immediately spring to mind, while only last season the teams shared six goals equally at St James’ Park. There was also Divock Origi’s late winner in a 3-2 thriller at St James’ Park towards the end of an epic title race with Manchester City in 2018/19.

Trying to make any confident predictions about this current Liverpool side seems like something of a mug’s game, given the Jekyll-and-Hyde nature of the reigning champions in recent weeks.

Which LFC will we get on Saturday – the high-class version which thumped Marseille and Qarabag in the Champions League, or the disorganised rabble which blew it at Bournemouth last weekend?

Newcastle have also been hard to get a read on of late – their last seven games have resulted in three wins (one on penalties), two draws and two defeats. In the space of four days, they went from failing to score against Premier League basement dwellers Wolves to thrashing PSV Eindhoven 3-0.

It’s not the easiest fixture to predict, for sure, although the reverse meeting at St James’ Park suggests that Keane’s 2-2 may not be far wide of the mark. We’ll tentatively go for a Liverpool victory, but who knows with these two sides!

You can watch Slot’s full post-Qarabag press conference below, via Empire of the Kop on YouTube: