No case to be made for patched-up defence
This was the wrong game for a City side to be so weak at the back, writes James Ducker
As a snapshot of Manchester City’s defensive anxiety, it was telling. There were 16 minutes remaining when Claudio Bravo played a short goal kick to John Stones on the six-yard box. Mohamed Salah was waiting on the edge of the penalty area to chase down Stones and, as the Liverpool forward approached, the City defender – hoping to find Angelino on the left touchline – succeeded only in launching the ball high into the stands.
Anfield cheered while Stones blew out his cheeks and brushed his hair with his hand before throwing it down in frustration.
City have struggled here before with a full complement of defenders and their first-choice goalkeeper, Ederson, to choose from, so the sight of a patched-up back five being asked to shut out one of the most formidable attacks in world football was always going to be the tallest of orders.
It certainly had the look of the wrong game at the wrong time for Pep Guardiola, even if that is unlikely to elicit any sympathy given the vast resources at the City manager’s disposal and the feeling that, for all the injuries, he still got his selection wrong defensively.
With Bravo once again reaffirming that he is ill-equipped to deputise for Ederson in a team who demand so much of their goalkeeper, Stones still short of confidence and at a career crossroads, and Angelino making only the second Premier League start of his career in a stadium Guardiola rates as the most forbidding in Europe, City were markedly second rate in positions you can ill afford against Liverpool.
It was a game that was going to require a little luck, and for City’s attack to be ruthless in front of goal. Neither happened and the end result felt very much like their title slipping away.
City have had some time to get used to the idea of tackling this game without Aymeric Laporte, their best defender, who has been ruled out until the new year with a cruciate knee ligament injury. But the loss of Ederson, with a thigh injury, was a real kick in the teeth.
Bravo had replaced the Brazilian at half-time against Atalanta in the Champions League on Wednesday, only to be sent off 36 minutes later for his latest rush of blood and every time the ball went near him you could sense City’s unease – and Liverpool’s anticipation.
There is an amusing story about Ederson in a recent book charting City’s rise to domestic dominance under Guardiola. Ederson had only been with City a matter of weeks following his move from Benfica when he decided it was high time he tried to make an impression on his new team-mates while they ate dinner in Nashville on the final leg of their pre-season tour of the United States. And so, from nowhere, City’s new goalkeeper charged at the club’s biggest security guard, Okon, and rugbytackled him to the ground, to widespread bemusement.
The thing with Ederson, though, is that his eccentricities are revealed only off the field. Bravo’s tend to come on the pitch, Liverpool’s third goal being another troubling case in point.
What, honestly, was he thinking? Sure, Jordan Henderson did well to dig out a fine cross from the right touchline, a ball of which Trent Alexander-arnold would have been proud, if not quite as delicious as Andrew Robertson’s pass of the season to date for Salah to score.
But Bravo got his bearings all wrong, initially thinking he could catch Henderson’s cross only to realise he had horribly misjudged it, and there was Sadio Mane to stoop to head home at the far post, with Stones and Kyle Walker either ball-watching or too slow to react.
Could Guardiola have done anything differently? Probably not where Bravo was concerned, but Stones was an odd pick over Nicolas Otamendi and, while Angelino did recover well in the final 20 minutes, Joao Cancelo might have been a better fit.
Guardiola could not have imagined he would lose Laporte for so long, but City’s failure to bring in a centre-half such as Harry Maguire in the summer always looked a gamble.
Put it this way, it will be very difficult to win the title with a defence like this.