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Hello! Liverpool dropped Manchester City to the canvas. Are they getting back up?
On the way:
Knockout blow? Guardiola wants City ‘reset’ after Liverpool loss
Manchester City’s powers of recovery are legendary — come Easter, they’re always there — but I don’t see them beating the count of 10 this time.
Saying it’s game over for City is risky because they have been the architects of some of the Premier League’s best comebacks, but they’re fooling nobody. They’ve spent a month looking rattled. Yesterday’s 2-0 defeat at Liverpool was a test of how badly. I’ll leave the verdict to Pep Guardiola: “We reset and start from zero.”
I don’t know what it is, but clashes with Liverpool rarely bring the best out of Guardiola’s City, especially at Anfield. Guardiola seems to suffer from the enormity of the fixture, whereas Liverpool love the high stakes. It felt that way again as Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah put City to bed.
The state of play is as follows: Liverpool hold a nine-point lead at the top of the Premier League, which is mega. There has been no bigger advantage at this stage of a Premier League season for 30 years. They’re 11 points clear of City, which is surely terminal from Guardiola’s perspective.
Title-winners have overturned bigger deficits before — Arsenal blitzed a 13-point gap in the 1997-98 season, for example — but Guardiola is right. City can’t think about the championship. They can only think about a comprehensive reset. And as they try to get their house in order, who would bet against Liverpool growing their advantage?
Contrasting fortunes
Liverpool and Arne Slot are so impressive in so many respects. Their form is epic — 11 wins from 13 league matches — and you have to admire their work out of possession. City had two shots on target. Slot has his tactics nailed.
They’ll be tough to beat to the title because while Arsenal and others might pinch points off them in head-to-heads, Liverpool have the guise of a team who will remain in a consistently high gear. Slot described their work rate as “perfect”. Yesterday, it really was.
City’s concession of the penalty (above) that sealed Liverpool’s 2-0 win summed up the bigger picture: Liverpool swarming, Guardiola’s boys triggered. Not since Guardiola brought his first title to the Etihad in 2018 have his team seemed so lost.
Sixth sense
(Adrian Dennis/AFP via Getty Images)
Guardiola has six titles, of course, and he reminded the Anfield crowd of that by gesturing to them with six fingers as they chanted about him being “sacked in the morning”.
He gave the impression of being disappointed by those taunts. “I didn’t expect it of the people of Liverpool,” he said, but ‘sacked in the morning’ is an age-old wind-up in England and six defeats from seven matches invited ridicule. He shouldn’t be so precious.
Guardiola’s flex about his six championships was, I think, a resigned admission that number seven will get away from him this season. It’s no bluff and it reminded me of Tadej Pogacar’s words when the 2023 Tour de France broke even him: “I’m gone.”
News round-up
Around the grounds: A hat-trick of penalties and Arsenal making sweet music
We got a Premier League first on Saturday: a hat-trick of penalties scored in the same game by the same player, the work of Justin (son of Patrick) Kluivert. His solid nerve gave Bournemouth a 4-2 win at Wolverhampton Wanderers.
It was a great example of the psychology of spot kicks, where an outfield footballer and a goalkeeper face off repeatedly. Kluivert’s strategy was to tie Jose Sa in knots: penalty one went down the middle (above), penalty two to Sa’s right, penalty three more to his left. Try finding the tell in that mix.
Sa gave away two of the penalties. He also tried to get into the crowd at half-time to front up a couple of Wolves fans who had been giving him stick. It’s not stretching things to say that if you offered Wolves fans survival at the end of the season, they would kiss your face.
Elsewhere, I’m wondering if Joshua Zirkzee picked up on the line in The Athletic’s DealSheet that said Manchester United might jettison the forward a year after paying £34m ($43m) for him. He scored twice as they scudded Everton 4-0. Could he get himself into Ruben Amorim’s good books?
Then there was Arsenal, doing what they like to do away at West Ham United by flying into a 4-0 lead in the first half. West Ham are rubbish, granted, but it’s absolutely no coincidence that since Martin Odegaard returned from injury to conduct the orchestra, Arsenal’s music has sounded sweet.
Chelsea are sticking around and made mincemeat of Aston Villa yesterday, but if Liverpool can be stopped, it’s Arsenal who will be coming for them.
Best of The Athletic FC
Dejan Joveljic (9) celebrates with midfielder Puig (10) after scoring (Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images)
Quiz answer
On Friday, we challenged you to name the eight players who have conjured four assists in a single Premier League game.
They were: Dennis Bergkamp (Arsenal vs Leicester, 1999), Jose Antonio Reyes (Arsenal vs Middlesbrough, 2006), Cesc Fabregas (Arsenal vs Blackburn, 2009), Emmanuel Adebayor (Tottenham vs Newcastle, 2012), Santi Cazorla (Arsenal vs Wigan, 2013), Harry Kane (Tottenham vs Southampton, 2020), Paul Pogba (Manchester United vs Leeds United, 2021), Jeremy Doku (Manchester City vs Bournemouth, 2023).
Catch a match (ET/UK time)
Serie A: Roma vs Atalanta, 2.45pm/7.45pm — OneFootball/CBS Sports, Amazon Prime; La Liga: Sevilla vs Osasuna, 3pm/8pm — Premier Sports/ESPN+, Fubo.
And finally…
What was the phrase we used about the final of the Copa Libertadores? No quarter given?
Botafogo’s Gregore must have heard us because this was his head-loss tackle less than a minute into Saturday’s showdown with Atletico Mineiro. Incredibly, no harm was done to either the poleaxed Fausto Vera or Botafogo: they went on to with the final 3-1 with 10 men.
It’s the first time the Brazilian club (controlled by Crystal Palace shareholder and would-be owner of *insert club here* John Textor) have claimed the South American equivalent of the Champions League.
Moreover, it grants them entry to FIFA’s 2025 Club World Cup, for which the 32-team line-up is now complete. They’ve earned their place a little more than Inter Miami.
(Top photo: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
