Newcastle United and Liverpool open their 2026-27 Premier League campaigns against each other at St James’ Park on August 23, both with new managers, Matthias Jaissle and Andoni Iraola. The two clubs have been doing business with each other for more than 50 years, and it has rarely been quiet.
Newcastle have sold Liverpool a record-breaking signing in three separate decades, most recently Alexander Isak in 2025. That history sits behind the fixture every time it comes around, and the Newcastle vs Liverpool odds for the opener reflect two clubs arriving in very different shape.
In this article, we look at five players who left Tyneside for Anfield, and what happened once they got there.
Terry McDermott
McDermott played against Liverpool for Newcastle in the 1974 FA Cup final and lost. Bob Paisley signed him that November, and it took him time to settle, with just 25 appearances across his first two seasons, but he became one of the most decorated midfielders of the era.
McDermott won five First Division titles and three European Cups, scoring the opening goal in the 1977 final against Borussia Monchengladbach. In 1980 he became the first player to win both the Football Writers’ Association and Professional Footballers’ Association Player of the Year awards in the same season. He rejoined Newcastle in 1982.
Peter Beardsley
Kenny Dalglish paid Newcastle £1.9m for Beardsley in the summer of 1987, a British record at the time, funded largely by Ian Rush’s sale to Juventus. Beardsley was slow out of the blocks, scoring four times in the first half of the season before adding 11 league goals in the second, and the attack he formed with John Barnes and John Aldridge took Liverpool to the 1987-88 title.
He won a second league title in 1989-90 and the FA Cup in 1989. Graeme Souness sold him to Everton in 1991, and Newcastle bought him back two years later for £1.5m.
Andy Carroll
Liverpool sold Fernando Torres to Chelsea for £50m on deadline day in January 2011 and spent £35m of it on Carroll within hours, a record fee for a British player. He scored 11 goals in 58 appearances across 18 months at Anfield, six of them in the league.
The high point was the winner against Everton in the 2012 FA Cup semi-final, and he also picked up a League Cup medal that season. He joined West Ham United on loan in 2012 and permanently for £15m the following year.
Georginio Wijnaldum
Wijnaldum arrived for £25m in July 2016 having scored 11 goals in 38 league games for a Newcastle side that had just been relegated. Few would have revised their view of Liverpool’s Premier League odds on the strength of it.
He made 237 appearances over five years, filling in at centre-back and up front when Jurgen Klopp needed him to, and won the Champions League in 2019 and the Premier League in 2020. He left on a free transfer to Paris Saint-Germain in 2021.
Alexander Isak
Isak’s exit was the messiest of the five. He refused to play, publicly accused Newcastle of breaking promises to him, and completed a British record £125m move on deadline day in September 2025.
That came six months after he scored the winner against Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, a goal that gave Newcastle their first major domestic trophy since 1955.
His first season at Anfield produced four goals in all competitions, three of them in the league, with injury keeping him out for long stretches.
