SKY PUT THE pre-game question to Pep Guardiola: what kind of game was he expecting?
Would it be like his side’s defeat away to Arsenal – drab, cautious, low-scoring – or the 4-4 draw against Chelsea, which was the kind of wild and bloody chaos to thrill everyone while giving Guardiola an aneurysm?
He said he didn’t know, but she should listened to Jurgen Klopp, who has long been railing against Saturday lunchtime kick-offs immediately after international breaks. “The people making these decisions”, sighed Klopp, “they cannot feel football, it is just not possible.”
We got exactly the type of game that Klopp would have anticipated: it was ragged, subdued, and staccato; difficult to reconcile with the many high-wire thrillers these sides have served up over the years.
And it should be no surprise: four of the starting players were playing South American qualifiers on Wednesday morning – how else to explain the baffling jitters of Alisson Becker? – while Klopp said his side had just one training session together ahead of the game.
But it’s also a reality that the games between the best sides in the league have slowly become more cautious, lower-scoring affairs.
This rivalry was at its most adrenal when Liverpool first emerged as flawed but manic subversives, when they pressed the life out of City and edged high-scoring thrillers. But as Liverpool have improved, the spectacle of these clashes has been diminished. That’s not to say it has been eliminated entirely, but instead has become more contained within periods of the game when one side has to go chasing a goal. Nowadays these games have become about baiting a press close to your own goal to create space, which involves a lot of dull passing around your own box.
Plus, this fixture is not the clash of near-equals it was before last season. Liverpool 2.0 have developed at a faster rate than it was reasonable to expect, but City 2.0 are still superior.
This was therefore a brilliant result for Liverpool: it would be uncharitable to say they didn’t deserve a draw, but they certainly didn’t deserve to win. Trent Alexander-Arnold conceded after the game that Liverpool weren’t at their best, especially in the first-half, but nor were City. That brutal, relentless jab of their attacking play wasn’t there. Much like Liverpool, they lacked flow. But they still had enough to leave all connected to Liverpool breaking into a cold sweat. Their threat came almost entirely down the left, with Jeremy Doku the latest wide player sent out to torture Alexander-Arnold. In truth the Liverpool full-back defended him pretty well, but he was frequently outnumbered.
Bernardo Silva is Guardiola’s own Tom Wambsgan – a highly-interchangable modular part whose role in the supporting cast serves only to make him more dangerous – and today he was sent to stand between the lines and inside Doku, to further trouble Alexander-Arnold. Silva was truly outstanding in the first-half: connecting play and wriggling through challenges, ghosting into spaces into which Liverpool couldn’t mark him.
How maddening for Alexander-Arnold, then, that he was only truly beaten by Nathan Ake. Alisson attempted his classic quick larrup up field for Mo Salah – the route to goal in last season’s home win over City – only to miscue it to Ake, who skipped much too easily by the Liverpool players in front of him. Erling Haaland made himself available for the pass and did the rest.
Liverpool, meanwhile, looked tentative. Their assistant manager has talked before of them attacking as if they had a knife between their teeth, but today they went forward as if they were holding their breath. They took a couple too many touches whenever they had their counter-attacking opportunities, and the distances between their front three were too big. That Diogo Jota started the game remains an allegation.
Liverpool improved after the break, with Ryan Gravenberch terrific off the bench: his ball-carrying giving them a reliable way of getting up the pitch. They were lucky not to be two goals down before they hauled themselves level, however, with Alisson deemed to have been fouled by Akanji before Dias tapped the ball in.
Alisson briefly showed his true self with a point-blank block on Haaland, from which Liverpool trotted forward and Alexander-Arnold absolutely Gerrarded the ball into the bottom corner from the edge of the box.
There was no winning the game from there for Liverpool, Klopp instantly took off Darwin Nunez and brought on Wataru Endo, and his side held on, surviving the late fright of Haaland’s header dropping just outside the far post.
In the past, Liverpool have played brilliantly away to Manchester City and still lost; at other times they have been below their best and not lost.
They have never, however, got a result they truly needed at the Etihad. A draw in 18/19 would have won them the league, and a win rather than a draw in 21/22 would have been enough to take the title, too. They had the league won in 2020 before they rocked up at City’s ground.
This game may sit alone. On the basis of their performance Liverpool could not have asked for much more than a draw, and yet it feels like a stretch they will have cause to regret not winning this game.
Liverpool can and will improve, but their problem is Manchester City will too: they have Kevin de Bruyne, Jack Grealish and John Stones to add to the team that played today.
It was a game to show how Liverpool have improved from last season, but at the end of it all, there is a nagging sense that they are still not quite ready to chase down the champions.
