City blown to shreds in eye of Reds storm
Liverpool fans pelt City bus and wheels come off on pitch, writes Jim White
Never can a welcome have had such a dramatic effect. Manchester City arrived on Merseyside into a storm of a kind I have never before witnessed in English football.
Outside Anfield a crowd had been gathering for hours, their intent clear: they wanted to let their visitors know they were in for a game. And there was no way for City to avoid the trap being set for them, no disguising the Mancunian coach as it crawled through the traffic. The bold graphics on the side seemed to act as a target. Missiles rained down on it, smokebombs were sparked, everywhere smelt of ordnance. And the noise was extraordinary: a visceral howl of threat hung over Liverpool.
Inside the ground it was no less charged. The fans were in place 45 minutes before kick off, going through their songbook, passing banners overhead detailing their club’s European pedigree. Sure, the City fans cowed in the corner of the Anfield Rd stand did their best to disparage their efforts.
“Just like United, you live in the past,” they sang. It was the last we heard of them. Here was the club that defines itself by its European pedigree up against the team that has never really got on with continental competition, the fans who sing themselves hoarse when Europe is on the agenda against the fans who boo the Champions League anthem.
And there was no doubt who was winning the battle of the noise. If choruses of You’ll Never Walk Alone won silverware on their own, titles would never head anywhere other than Anfield.
This was more than simply the home crowd answering their manager’s plea to get behind their team. This was an atmosphere seldom seen in the sterile Premier League era. This was the past reborn.
And from the moment the prospective English champions stepped on to the Anfield turf, it was clear they had been disturbed by what had greeted them. Just as the volume seemed to light a fire in the belly of the men in red, so it emasculated their opponents in blue.
As every touch by a Liverpool player was greeted with a cacophony, so every touch by their City opponents was met by whistles.
What City had to do was seize an early advantage, kill the noise, undermine the dynamic. Instead, they faltered. Players such as Leroy Sane, normally so sure-footed, began to make poor decisions. After a season of peerless goalkeeping, Ederson was suddenly giving a passable impression of Claudio Bravo. Extraordinarily, David Silva was being caught in possession.
Mainlining the noise, Liverpool poured forward. Under the relentless pressing, City looked suddenly what they hadn’t all season: ordinary.
This was the way to beat the best football team in the land.
Whatever City’s plan was, it wasn’t working. The noise would not be abated. When the peerless Mohamed Salah scored, the grand new main stand actually shook. By the time Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Sadio Mane added the second and third the superstructure was undergoing a test its architects could not have predicted. All around, the home fans were wearing expressions of joyful astonishment.
Watching from the touchline, how Pep Guardiola must have wondered what was happening to his well-oiled machine. He did his best to halt the contagion. When Nicolas Otamendi sent an over-optimistic pass wells ahead of any City runner, instead of greeting it with a snarl, he ostentatiously clapped his hands above his head.
He could see what was happening, and was trying to encourage his players, trying to generate patience, calm in the madness.
In the second half he had some reaction from his team. They tried to play their way through the noise. Raheem Sterling, came on as a substitute and did his best, galloping down the line, fizzing.
But his efforts were not enough. As the comic Justin Moorhouse tweeted after the game, it seeme while everyone was preoccupied with bottles and cans hitting the City bus, no one noticed the wheels coming off.
— Telegraph Media Group