This was a no-show, a failure from Liverpool who slipped through the Carabao Cup final like ghosts – Arne Slot was outcoached and his team were outplayed, writes IAN LADYMAN

From Arne Slot’s red machine, this was a white flag performance. The pressing question now is how quickly and to what extent they can get it out of their system.

This was a calamitous effort from the Premier League leaders. Slow, uncertain, tentative and, when everything was on the line, unresponsive. Liverpool slipped through this final like ghosts, leaving nothing behind only regret.

Everybody loses in sport at one time or another. But to lose like this is quite something else. This was a no-show – a failure – so vast and so damning that the only comfort to be taken over what will now feel like a long international break is that their lead at the top of the Premier League is huge.

12 points. That is all that matters now. That is the size of it for Slot and his players. That’s the difference between them and Arsenal in second. That’s the cushion they have as they now refocus on the one trophy that really matters to them and the way they will be feeling in the morning they will cling to every one of those points like miniature life rafts.

Arsenal play next – at home to Fulham – on April 1 so the lead could well be nine by the time Everton visit Anfield the following evening. Psychologically, Liverpool would wish that game to arrive sooner. This one needs to be flushed through the veins as quickly and possible. Slot acknowledged this as he spoke on Sunday evening.

But physically all the signs written large across Wembley’s green acres here pointed to a group of players that need a rest. Those of us who have seen a lot of Liverpool recently could see this result coming, if not quite this performance.

Arne Slot’s Reds were bounced out of their second cup competition in the space of a week

Liverpool eyed a quadruple at the start of February but must now focus solely on the title race

Liverpool had already started to struggle to put 90-minute performances together before they met Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League last Tuesday and the effect of that 120-minute contest was clear from the moment this game kicked-off against a Newcastle team that came at them like fighting dogs released from a cage. Newcastle looked like they could and would run forever. Liverpool looked in need of a lie down.

Slot’s post-match analysis was thorough and generous to the victors. It also left some questions unanswered. The Liverpool boss said that Newcastle had not out played them but had played ‘over’ his team with long balls and passes. He added that any team that did that would be successful against his own more often than they would not.

So is that the blueprint when playing Liverpool? Is it really that simple? Knock it long, lads. If it is then David Moyes will be drilling the Tarkowski-Beto move on a daily basis over the next two and a half weeks.

It is more complicated and more nuanced than that, of course. Yet at the national stadium, the differences between Liverpool and Newcastle were all the obvious ones. Newcastle were quicker and more aggressive and more in tune with what Eddie Howe had asked of them. They won midfield tackles early and in doing so established a dominance in that area that they never really released. Joelinton – Newcastle’s Brazilian titan – was magnificent in terms of setting and then keeping that tone. Early on, he was celebrating winning throw-ins. It was that kind of afternoon for the winners.

Liverpool had nobody like this. Mo Salah was isolated to the degree he may as well have been on his own pitch. Slot’s midfield three of Dominik Szobszlai, Alexis MacAllister and Ryan Gravenberch were boys to Newcastle’s running men. They started badly and got worse, as if diminished by the experience of throwing everything they had at PSG last week and failing.

The opening Newcastle goal was a disaster. How did MacAllister come to be marking Dan Burn? The Argentinean was giving away about nine inches in height.

Slot explained, in his usual calm and rational way, that Liverpool’s zonal defence at corners is set up for his big players to deal with the aerial threats when they appear closer to goal. In other words, if Burn had advanced then Virgil van Dijk or Ibrahima Konate or someone would have picked him up. When he held his position so far from goal, he simply wasn’t expected to score. But then he did so that was the end of that plan.

But the truth is that Newcastle would have scored eventually, the way this game went. Their dominance and mastery of their own ideas was such that it was inevitable. That they only scored twice over the piece was the only surprise about the outcome.

Mo Salah was a non-factor in the game and is still yet to score a non-penalty goal in a final 

Newcastle’s midfield duo of Joelinton and Bruno Guimaraes neutralised their opposition

Slot was out coached and his team was out played. It’s a destructive combination. His substitutions could have worked. Curtis Jones was dynamic if errant when two chances came. Federico Chiesa scored, if too late. But in terms of Darwin Nunez, it’s tempting to wonder if we have seen the last of him. He looked shot to pieces, here, as though he was carrying his shoot-out calamity against PSG round his neck. It was hard not to pity him.

All that is left for Liverpool now, though, is the one thing that truly matters, a 12-point lead and some perspective. Slot was keen to stress it.

‘The week started with a win against Southampton and a 12 point gap so it’s not all negative,’ he said.

‘Liverpool can lose football matches, you know.’

The Dutchman was right, too. About all of it. Liverpool’s season still offers great glory that will surely be theirs. But they have now lost consecutive games under Slot for the first time. If two becomes three next month then 12 may become nine and those who live to revel in these things will begin to talk.