I was looking forward to the Liverpool match against Manchester City.
The media circus surrounding it made the match compelling viewing.
The fact that this particular Premier League match was the first for both teams after the 114 Premier League guilty verdicts for Manchester City took this encounter to a whole other level.
As you all will no doubt know, Man City hammered Liverpool 3-0.
I wanted to wind back a bit though and talk about one particular Liverpool player.
Alexander Isak and Hugo Ekitike were both missing and Lewis Koumas (pictured at the top) was playing as the central striker.
I have to admit I knew nothing about Lewis Koumas but the Sky Sports pundits and commentators were going on and on about him, making it clear that this was a huge ask for this Koumas. I wasn’t taking a lot of notice at first but with the repeated references to him and what a huge problem it was for Liverpool having to play such a young inexperienced player, I thought clearly he must be an emergency call up from the youth team, a striker who was aged 17 or 18 at the oldest and suddenly having to play a first team game of football after being catapulted from nowhere.
The references to Lewis Koumas during the match seemed to back up that opinion I had formed, the commentators taking every chance to talk up how relatively well he was doing, this young kid who had never played first team football before, suddenly coming from youth football and having to start.
After the scousers had got battered by Man City, I searched online for Lewis Koumas.
Turns out he isn’t 17, he is actually 21.
I also discovered that far from being his first ever experience of first team football, he has actually played more than 100 games for club AND country!
Pardon my ignorance but the truth is that Lewis Koumas has now made four first team appearances for Liverpool, 83 appearances on loan for Hull, Stoke and Birmingham, plus played 16 times for the Wales first team!
Which brings me to Newcastle United….
Newcastle United also had a 21-year-old playing as the central striker in their most recent match.
However, the way the TV commentators and pundits have talked about him has been very different. Journalists and many Newcastle United fans can be included in this as well.
Matias Fernandez-Pardo has been catapulted into the Newcastle United first team, Matthias Jaissle having little choice but to do so, due to the early season injury crisis.
Yet sympathy and understanding from the media and indeed many Newcastle United fans has been thin on the ground.
Unlike Lewis Koumas who has had loads of first team football in this country (mainly with Championship clubs), as well as playing regularly for Wales, MFP has arrived in a new country and a new culture, on and off the pitch.
Convenient short memories for those giving this young inexperienced player over the top stick and even abuse in some cases. It was only last month Matias Fernandez-Pardo signed for Newcastle United!
He obviously had zero pre-season with his new teammates and only four days after signing he was playing Premier League football (off the bench against Bournemouth) and 13 days after joining NUFC he was having to start in the Premier League (away at Leeds).
Matias Fernandez-Pardo has still only been in the country, with Newcastle United, for six weeks. Although actually it is more like half of that as he was away with Belgium during this ridiculously long international break! After less than three weeks on Tyneside the 21-year-old was heading off for international football.
Yet already some want to slaughter and write him off, most embarrassingly of all is the fact that some Newcastle United fans are amongst those.
In his entire career, Matias Fernandez-Pardo has still only started 46 league matches at first team level in club football (plus a relative handful of minutes off the bench for Belgium), four for Gent in Belgium and then 39 with Lille in Ligue 1, including the 27 league starts in his 2025/26 breakthrough season which saw Newcastle United commit around £50m on this raw young talent.
Yet as I say, certain Newcastle United fans want to go way over the top and crucify Matias Fernandez-Pardo after three league starts for NUFC.
It is so pathetic and self-harming for any Newcastle fan to be abusing Matias Fernandez-Pardo instead of supporting him. We know what the media are all about, with very rare exceptions they are desperate for Newcastle United to fail. What excuse do these Newcastle United supporters have???
It isn’t a case of pretending somebody has played well when they haven’t BUT you have to keep it in perspective.
Nobody can accuse Matias Fernandez-Pardo of not trying, his workrate is phenomenal. He has failed to take some chances and he’s made the wrong decisions at times but for such an inexperienced player catapulted into starting Premier League matches, this shouldn’t be seen as unexplainable, inexplicable.
He has a great skill set and devastating pace, he needs our support, not to be made a scapegoat.