Top-of-table clash fails to hit high notes
MANCHESTER CITY’S coach ride to the stadium passed without incident – and so did this so-called showdown for 85 minutes. Not until Riyad Mahrez ballooned a penalty high over the bar to blow a glorious chance to end City’s dismal Anfield record.
After this surprising stalemate, we are no wiser as to who has the better title credentials.
Neither Pep Guardiola nor Jurgen Klopp would have admitted it but they would surely have taken a point before the game. They both stay unbeaten and concede no psychological damage to their rivals.
Guardiola, of course, will be deeply frustrated simply because of the spot-kick blunder by his record buy. But he will be consoled by the fact his champions learnt their lessons from last season’s defensive calamities at Liverpool.
Perhaps we were spoilt by the 18 goals served up in last season’s four epic encounters between these clubs. Both teams appeared to have done so much tactical work on how to stop their opponents, they cancelled each other out in a dull first 45 minutes.
The gloves came off to a certain extent after the break but still chances were at a premium, until Virgil van Dijk’s lunge on Leroy Sane gifted the wasted spot-kick.
Guardiola had predicted that if City kept the ball well they could draw Liverpool’s fire, and so it proved.
You need players who are technically accomplished and comfortable with the ball at their feet under pressure to play that way. That is why he picked John Stones and Aymeric Laporte at centre-back rather than the more physical Vincent Kompany and Nicolas Otamendi.
They knocked the ball around deep in a bid to draw Liverpool onto them and open up space in midfield. But Klopp’s men did not fall for it.
One of the many subplots was the head-to-head of Brazil’s No1 and No2 keepers, Alisson and Ederson. In the event neither had much to do, with Allison no doubt relieved that Mahrez could not even get his penalty on target.
Another – the shootout between Mo Salah, below, and Sergio Aguero – was also a disappointment. Aguero was hooked after 65 minutes after barely having a kick – it is 10 visits now to Anfield for the striker without a goal. Salah was kept on a tight leash by Benjamin Mendy and wasted two second-half chances. He sent the first straight at Ederson and the second high into the Kop. Last season he would have taken both opportunities in the blink of an eye.
City felt they did not get the rub of the green in last season’s matches and Guardiola must have thought his luck had changed when Van Dijk brought down Sane.
Martin Atkinson pointed to the spot, only for Mahrez to blow his big moment and the chance to write himself into City folklore by securing what would have been only the club’s second win in nearly four decades on the red half of Merseyside.