NEWCASTLE // Newcastle United admitted defeat yesterday after conducting a worldwide search for a buyer.
They were condemned to defeat by a world-beater a matter of hours later as Steven Gerrard, playing with an irresistible blend of power and persistence, ensured Liverpool enter 2009 top of the
Premier League.
If Mike Ashley had hoped his decision to take the club off the market would galvanise the team, he was sadly mistaken. Newcastle, with one notable exception, were abject. They were overwhelmed, overrun and overcome.
The contrast with Liverpool, magnificent and menacing, was marked. This was a performance worthy of league leaders and a statement of real intent after
recent stutters. Sami Hyypia and Ryan Babel, two of their goalscorers, excelled and Yossi Benayoun blended deft touches with incisive passes, but there was no disputing the identity of their inspiration.
Their captain was the catalyst, scorer and creator of two goals apiece, the driving force turning in a tour de force. Gerrard's dominance mirrored Liverpool's.
"It was the best performance I've seen from a player for a long time," said Newcastle manager Joe Kinnear. "They were head and shoulders above us. It was one-sided because they are world-class. We had deficiencies in so many areas."
This was a rout but even so, the scoreline did not reflect Liverpool's superiority. The reason for that was Shay Given. The match began as a duel between Given against Gerrard, but ended up with the goalkeeper taking on much of the Liverpool team. He started by repelling a Dirk Kuyt shot, before keeping out a pair of efforts from Gerrard. Lucas Leiva was thwarted three times and Hyypia once. But even Given could not halt Liverpool forever. Gerrard provided an emphatic finish to Benayoun's cutback from the by-line. Five minutes later, Hyypia headed in Gerard's delivery from the right flank.
Indeed, Newcastle proved unable to deal with Gerrard's corners throughout and another was converted, at the second time of asking, by Babel. Finally, the Liverpool skipper completed a brace to accompany his pair of assists when he accelerated on to Lucas' precise pass to dink a shot over Given.
With Gerrard withdrawn - seemingly for Newcastle's protection - Liverpool added a fifth, Xabi Alonso converting a penalty. In the final analysis David Edgar's header for Newcastle, on the stroke of half-time, only impacted on Liverpool's goal difference.
It added to the feeling from Anfield that they can finally secure a 19th title.
The assistant manager Sammy Lee said: "We've got a belief; it's not an arrogance. We prepare to succeed; we don't prepare to fail."
While Rafa Benitez continued his recovery from kidney stones, Lee hinted that Liverpool's manager is too much of a perfectionist to savour it. He added: "Rafa being Rafa, he'll be looking at the DVD now to see where we can improve."
There are plenty of areas of improvement for Newcastle. Movement at the top of the club has been ruled out now, however. Ashley had said in a statement: "I have withdrawn Newcastle United from the market and for me 2009 will be the year in which we drive the club forward together." This hardly
epresented an auspicious start."
rjolly@thenational.ae
FORSPOKEN
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Marvel's%20Spider-Man%202
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Assassin's%20Creed%20Mirage
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Starfield
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The Lowdown
Us
Director: Jordan Peele
Starring: Lupita Nyong'o, Winston Duke, Shahadi Wright Joseqph, Evan Alex and Elisabeth Moss
Rating: 4/5
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
War
Director: Siddharth Anand
Cast: Hrithik Roshan, Tiger Shroff, Ashutosh Rana, Vaani Kapoor
Rating: Two out of five stars
Men from Barca's class of 99
Crystal Palace - Frank de Boer
Everton - Ronald Koeman
Manchester City - Pep Guardiola
Manchester United - Jose Mourinho
Southampton - Mauricio Pellegrino
Diriyah%20project%20at%20a%20glance
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Essentials
The flights
Emirates and Etihad fly direct from the UAE to Geneva from Dh2,845 return, including taxes. The flight takes 6 hours.
The package
Clinique La Prairie offers a variety of programmes. A six-night Master Detox costs from 14,900 Swiss francs (Dh57,655), including all food, accommodation and a set schedule of medical consultations and spa treatments.
The specs
Engine: 2.0-litre turbo 4-cyl
Transmission: eight-speed auto
Power: 190bhp
Torque: 300Nm
Price: Dh169,900
On sale: now
Israel Palestine on Swedish TV 1958-1989
Director: Goran Hugo Olsson
Rating: 5/5
Greatest of All Time
Starring: Vijay, Sneha, Prashanth, Prabhu Deva, Mohan
Tips to keep your car cool
- Place a sun reflector in your windshield when not driving
- Park in shaded or covered areas
- Add tint to windows
- Wrap your car to change the exterior colour
- Pick light interiors - choose colours such as beige and cream for seats and dashboard furniture
- Avoid leather interiors as these absorb more heat
The specs
Engine: 1.5-litre turbo
Power: 181hp
Torque: 230Nm
Transmission: 6-speed automatic
Starting price: Dh79,000
On sale: Now
The five stages of early child’s play
From Dubai-based clinical psychologist Daniella Salazar:
1. Solitary Play: This is where Infants and toddlers start to play on their own without seeming to notice the people around them. This is the beginning of play.
2. Onlooker play: This occurs where the toddler enjoys watching other people play. There doesn’t necessarily need to be any effort to begin play. They are learning how to imitate behaviours from others. This type of play may also appear in children who are more shy and introverted.
3. Parallel Play: This generally starts when children begin playing side-by-side without any interaction. Even though they aren’t physically interacting they are paying attention to each other. This is the beginning of the desire to be with other children.
4. Associative Play: At around age four or five, children become more interested in each other than in toys and begin to interact more. In this stage children start asking questions and talking about the different activities they are engaging in. They realise they have similar goals in play such as building a tower or playing with cars.
5. Social Play: In this stage children are starting to socialise more. They begin to share ideas and follow certain rules in a game. They slowly learn the definition of teamwork. They get to engage in basic social skills and interests begin to lead social interactions.
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
Singham Again
Director: Rohit Shetty
Stars: Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Ranveer Singh, Akshay Kumar, Tiger Shroff, Deepika Padukone
Rating: 3/5
Match info
Uefa Champions League Group C
Liverpool v Napoli, midnight
COMPANY%20PROFILE%20
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Company%20profile
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Moon Music
Artist: Coldplay
Label: Parlophone/Atlantic
Number of tracks: 10
Rating: 3/5
The specs
Engine: 2-litre or 3-litre 4Motion all-wheel-drive Power: 250Nm (2-litre); 340 (3-litre) Torque: 450Nm Transmission: 8-speed automatic Starting price: From Dh212,000 On sale: Now
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
Ticket prices
General admission Dh295 (under-three free)
Buy a four-person Family & Friends ticket and pay for only three tickets, so the fourth family member is free
Buy tickets at: wbworldabudhabi.com/en/tickets
The%20specs
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COMPANY PROFILE
● Company: Bidzi
● Started: 2024
● Founders: Akshay Dosaj and Asif Rashid
● Based: Dubai, UAE
● Industry: M&A
● Funding size: Bootstrapped
● No of employees: Nine
Shubh Mangal Saavdhan
Directed by: RS Prasanna
Starring: Ayushmann Khurrana, Bhumi Pednekar
COMPANY%20PROFILE
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COMPANY%20PROFILE
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Joker: Folie a Deux
Starring: Joaquin Phoenix, Lady Gaga, Brendan Gleeson
Director: Todd Phillips
Rating: 2/5
Itcan profile
Founders: Mansour Althani and Abdullah Althani
Based: Business Bay, with offices in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and India
Sector: Technology, digital marketing and e-commerce
Size: 70 employees
Revenue: On track to make Dh100 million in revenue this year since its 2015 launch
Funding: Self-funded to date
Indian origin executives leading top technology firms
Sundar Pichai
Chief executive, Google and Alphabet
Satya Nadella
Chief executive, Microsoft
Ajaypal Singh Banga
President and chief executive, Mastercard
Shantanu Narayen
Chief executive, chairman, and president, Adobe
Indra Nooyi
Board of directors, Amazon and former chief executive, PepsiCo
Know your cyber adversaries
Cryptojacking: Compromises a device or network to mine cryptocurrencies without an organisation's knowledge.
Distributed denial-of-service: Floods systems, servers or networks with information, effectively blocking them.
Man-in-the-middle attack: Intercepts two-way communication to obtain information, spy on participants or alter the outcome.
Malware: Installs itself in a network when a user clicks on a compromised link or email attachment.
Phishing: Aims to secure personal information, such as passwords and credit card numbers.
Ransomware: Encrypts user data, denying access and demands a payment to decrypt it.
Spyware: Collects information without the user's knowledge, which is then passed on to bad actors.
Trojans: Create a backdoor into systems, which becomes a point of entry for an attack.
Viruses: Infect applications in a system and replicate themselves as they go, just like their biological counterparts.
Worms: Send copies of themselves to other users or contacts. They don't attack the system, but they overload it.
Zero-day exploit: Exploits a vulnerability in software before a fix is found.
How%20to%20avoid%20getting%20scammed
%3Cul%3E%0A%3Cli%3ENever%20click%20on%20links%20provided%20via%20app%20or%20SMS%2C%20even%20if%20they%20seem%20to%20come%20from%20authorised%20senders%20at%20first%20glance%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EAlways%20double-check%20the%20authenticity%20of%20websites%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EEnable%20Two-Factor%20Authentication%20(2FA)%20for%20all%20your%20working%20and%20personal%20services%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EOnly%20use%20official%20links%20published%20by%20the%20respective%20entity%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3Cli%3EDouble-check%20the%20web%20addresses%20to%20reduce%20exposure%20to%20fake%20sites%20created%20with%20domain%20names%20containing%20spelling%20errors%3C%2Fli%3E%0A%3C%2Ful%3E%0A
