Pep’s great team showing vulnerability at worst time
Liverpool’s hot shots ready to test City nerves again in Europe
ISAID 6-6 on aggregate. Manchester City 6 Liverpool 3. It could happen...
Despite that stunning result at Anfield, this Champions League quarter-final tie is far from over and whatever happens on Tuesday night, that result and yesterday’s loss to Manchester United will take nothing away from Manchester City’s brilliant Premier League season.
Over a billion people watched the Manchester derby last night and it had everything we all love about the Premier League.
Manchester City could have been five-up at half-time and having completely embarrassed their neighbours for 45 minutes, the title should have in the bag.
But they showed a real vulnerability, which is a major worry for Pep Guardiola before Tuesday night’s Champions League quarterfinal second leg against Liverpool.
A Guardiola team has conceded three goals in consecutive games for the first time and City lost a Premier League game from a twogoal margin for the first time in 10 years – when Liverpool beat them.
On top of that, their two strongest centre-backs, and a goalkeeper who was flawless until this week, have now conceded six in the last two games and suffered back-toback defeats.
Meanwhile, Jose Mourinho has to have a serious look at his Manchester United team for next season after the inspired second-half performance. They were so negative in the first half and lucky not to have been out of sight. But they somehow found a way to win and that second period proved Manchester United have the players and enough quality to attack teams.
At least Jurgen Klopp is brave. His attitude is live by the sword, die by the sword and there is no danger of his team being negative on Tuesday.
As brilliant as the Manchester derby was, I did have the misfortune of being at Goodison for the Merseyside version earlier in the day. And it was awful. It was the first time in the Premier League that there was not a card shown between Everton and Liverpool teams in the derby since the first one in 1992. That sums it up.
You can compare this City side with the very best the Premier League has produced over the years – Manchester United’s treble winners, the Arsenal Invincibles, Chelsea’s first season under Mourinho.
But it is impossible to pick the best of all that group, or make comparisons with the champions of the 60s, 70s and 80s, such as the famous Arsenal, Liverpool, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest sides, simply because they all played in different eras.
Plus, it is difficult not to base a judgment on trophies won. The Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup treble achieved by United in 1999 is going to be difficult to emulate, as Pep Guardiola has discovered this season, but so is remaining unbeaten throughout a league campaign, which Arsene Wenger once managed.
The difference with Manchester City is the way the play. None of those sides can match it, certainly not in the Premier League years. They have been wonderful to watch and I just love their style of football which is above anything I have seen. They are a fabulous team.
The level of consistency in the style of their play is way beyond those others. The Invincibles came close, but you often just expected them not to lose, not blow teams apart.
Guardiola takes a lot of the credit of course and he has stuck to his principles after the criticism of his defensive tactics in his first season in the Premier League. His attacking players have been phenomenal and it would be fitting if Kevin De Bruyne wins PFA Player of the Year and Mo Salah picks up the FWA award. They have both been the best players this season and deserve recognition.
Forget the quadruple. I don’t think it can be done. I don’t think Guardiola took it seriously, because, as he kept saying, it is so difficult to achieve. You have to sacrifice one and the treble is more realistic.
Obviously the Premier League and Champions League are the main ones but Guardiola and City fans are still relatively new to winning titles, so this is another stepping stone for the club. They can still win a treble, but the Premier League and League Cup double is still an achievement.
They have to win the Champions League and certainly challenge like Real Madrid, who hit form in this competition every season at the right time. City were the favourites to win the Champions League before the Anfield debacle when Liverpool showed, like all great sides, they have their weaknesses.
Now, I am not one to say I told you so but last week I did say that if Liverpool were going to get through, they had to win at Anfield and in a one-off game, they had already proved they were more than a match for City and can score goals against them.
City controlled the game early on and in those early stages it looked like the occasion was getting to the Liverpool players because they were a bit loose and all trying to create a tempo. It was a quick game, as quick as you are ever likely to see. And City dealt with it but in that first for 10 minutes, although they were in control of the ball, they didn’t create.
Did the bus attack and crowd trouble outside the ground affect them? Guardiola certainly didn’t look right in his pre-match interview. But the electricity inside the stadium was breathtaking and the Liverpool players drew from that and City simply could not handle it. They were blown away.
Salah, Firmino, Mane, OxladeChamberlain had so much pace and power and all through the side they performed. Henderson and Milner were outstanding, Lovren and Van Dijk strong, once again Robertson stood out, and Alexander-Arnold handled the atmosphere and marked Sane out of the game.
Work-rate won the game for Liverpool. Everybody is obsessed with stats nowadays but Klopp stresses to his players, that it is all about work, work, work and if you can’t work you are coming off.
And as devastating as they were on the counter-attack in the first half, I was impressed with them in the second half too. They didn’t have as much possession but they contained City and were comfortable apart from the Sane/Jesus offside goal. Lovren and van Dijk were excellent.
Looking at the second leg, Liverpool will be reminded about their collapse against Sevilla when they were 3-0 up at half-time in Spain and drew 3-3. It was alarming. They became erratic when Sevilla scored the first and that has to be a worry.
On the evidence of his performance in the first leg, the suspension of Henderson is a blow but Liverpool are the form team in Europe and if they can play like they did the other night, they will score.
They are on that kind of run where you just expect them to score in every game, and the amount of goals since the turn of the year is incredible.
Taking aside the goalless draw in the last 16 second leg against Porto, after thrashing them 5-0 in Portugal, they have scored 31 goals in 12 games since they lost 1-0 to Swansea. If they can get through to the semi-finals, no one will want to play Liverpool because they all know they will struggle to stop then scoring, especially at Anfield. This is not the Rafa Benitez team who were brilliant in the comeback against AC Milan in the 2005 Champions Final in Istanbul and of course lifted the trophy.
But if you look at their performances along the way, Benitez’s sides ground out results, and while I have total admiration for that team, and those tactics, this is the total opposite. Anyone left in the competition knows they will struggle to contain Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool.