Liverpool swatted Man City aside four days after swatting Real Madrid aside to open a nine-point lead at the top of the Premier League. Been a handy week for Arne Slot.
Thank you for reading this post, don't forget to subscribe!1. That feels pretty big, doesn’t it? The only shock from Manchester City’s latest abject, calamity-laden defeat that it was no shock. Liverpool set about them from the very first minute and while the total domination couldn’t last there never really felt like a single moment from Cody Gakpo’s goal onwards where the result was in any doubt.
The numbers are straightforward and stark. This is a win that, with a third of the season gone, takes Liverpool nine points clear of Chelsea and Arsenal and 11 clear of the fast-fading champions. It’s a result that leaves Arne Slot’s side not just in charge of the title race but in charge of whether or not there will even be one. It requires Liverpool to drop off now just to offer the rest a route back in, no matter how well Arsenal and Chelsea may currently be playing.
2. It really has been quite the week for Arne Slot’s side. Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool reign was a decorated and storied one, but two clubs prevented it being greater still. In the space of four days, the new manager has sauntered to astonishingly facile wins 2-0 wins against them both.
After the win over Real Madrid we noted that perhaps Liverpool still hadn’t truly proved they could beat a proper team. After today, we find ourselves wondering the same thing.
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3. That first 15 minutes was perhaps the most mortifying of Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City career. They’ve been outplayed and outfought distressingly often in recent weeks, but even last week against Spurs we can’t recall them looking quite this thoroughly clueless in the face of an opposition in rampant, destructive mood.
The game really could have been out of sight within 20 minutes. The opening goal arrived after 12 minutes and yet still felt massively overdue. Steffan Ortega, preferred in goal to Ederson for reasons upon which Pep Guardiola was reluctant to expand, was forced into a couple of routine saves and then a brilliant one to fingertip a Virgil van Dijk header on to the post. The potential routes to goal for Liverpool were so many and varied, City’s players so frozen and startled, that it really did feel just a matter of how and when rather than if.
Would it be a towering and yet weirdly unopposed Van Dijk header from a set-piece? A bit of Mo Salah magic, perhaps? Something Trent-flavoured?
4. In the end it was Salah in the architect role, picking up a raking pass and picking out the most deliciously perfect of crosses for the back-post run of Cody Gakpo that reduced Kyle Walker and Nathan Ake to training-ground props.
Even though he was clearly onside and you knew he was onside, you still found yourself having to wait just to be sure. It couldn’t possibly have been that easy to score, could it? Turns out it could.
5. Time and again in those opening 20 minutes City fell victim to the relentlessness of the Liverpool press. If there’s one team we’re not about to accuse of utter woke nonsense in playing it out from the back in the face of overwhelming evidence that it’s not working, it’s Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City. But lads, come on. Sometimes you just have to accept and acknowledge that this has gotten away from you.
And City eventually did. It took half-an-hour, but they did then manage to get some kind of foothold in the game. But these were astonishingly slim pickings. The fact it stopped looking like ritual humiliation is only so much of a positive.
We were trying to work out what City’s performance reminded us of, and it suddenly hit us. Remember every time Arsenal played a big team between about 2017 and 2021? Yeah, it looked like that. Which is not good.
For half an hour, City had been simply overwhelmed.
6. And there were just so many different ways it was happening. Outrageous long-range Trent Alexander-Arnold passes setting Salah one-on-one with Ake. Ilkay Gundogan being mugged in midfield. Van Dijk from set-pieces.
It felt absurd to be watching a team that has won six of the last seven Premier League titles looking this vulnerable in this many ways, and all while offering no punches back of their own.
7. After 38 minutes and 30 seconds, City finally managed an attempt. It fell, alas, to Rico Lewis, who scuffed tamely wide with an audacious and dare we say it rather optimistic attempt at an outside-of-the-boot number.
Liverpool had by this point had nine attempts on the City goal.
8. As disturbingly desperate as City’s defending so frequently looked during that harrowing first half spent forlornly chasing red shirts, it was the utter paucity of City’s attacking effort that may be more consequential in the end.
There were just no ideas at all here. No hint of a plan for how they intended to find a way through or around a defence being so superbly marshalled by Van Dijk.
There was no natural width from the theoretically attacking players in the team or the full-backs. Walker – as he showed last week – just isn’t that kind of defender any more, while Ake was just far too busy trying to keep some kind of lid on Salah.
It meant Liverpool’s defence and midfield knew they could focus on shutting down the central spaces on the few occasions City did try and muster something. And they achieved it all too easily.
9. This Liverpool side has been through some regeneration over the last few years, but there remains no doubt about the identity of their two most important players. Especially in these biggest games. Salah and Van Dijk were the game’s two standout performers by such a wide margin.
City never really got to grips with Salah at all. He got his assist for the first goal, should have scored a second after robbing Manuel Akanji before inexplicably displaying hints of mortality by shooting over the bar just as a goal felt inevitable, and then did score a second nervelessly from the penalty spot.
We may soon find out just how irreplaceable he really is for Liverpool, but for now he is propelling the most extraordinary of title charges.
10. And at the other end his old mate Van Dijk was utterly imperious, with the exception of one moment when he was commentator’s cursed into a panicked error by Gary Neville and had his blushes spared by Caoimhin Kelleher.
That apart, he was a towering figure in both boxes. He will feel he should have scored from at least one of the three very decent headed chances he was presented, while at the other end what little attacking endeavour City were able to muster seemed always to end at the feet – or more accurately head – of Van Dijk.
He made three interceptions – the same as the rest of Liverpool’s team combined – and seven clearances – again, the same as the rest of Liverpool’s team combined. He also blocked two shots which was… more than the rest of the Liverpool team combined.
It was probably fair enough that his one blip didn’t end in a goal to create a grandstand tense finish that frankly neither side would have deserved.
11. For huge swathes of the middle of this match, City could at least console themselves with the theoretical existence of a latent threat. While it remained only 1-0 and Liverpool continued to miss chances, it was not impossible to conceive of something smashy or grabby occurring. But it would have been a travesty.
And it again all just pointed to a diminished status that feels like it’s going to get harder and harder to restore. There was a moment in the second half when City won a pair of corners in quick succession and the away fans roared into life. This is no criticism of those supporters because fans of every club have been there, desperately clinging to whatever crumb of hope falls from the table.
But it’s been a long old time since City fans have been reduced to convincing themselves that a couple of corners in quick succession represents a corner being turned.
12. City were better in the second half, albeit with the caveat that they pretty much had to be. Jeremy Doku’s introduction made a difference. There was suddenly actual width and perhaps even more importantly purpose to City’s efforts.
He’s not a player ideally suited to City at their most machine-like and efficient, but here Doku was just the thing: a maverick, a mercurial option who at least threatened to make something, anything, happen for the team in blue.
From the point of his introduction on the left, 61 per cent of City’s attacks came down his flank.
13. And yet… Liverpool’s control still felt absolute. They were living on counter-attacks, but happy to do so. They still always felt the likelier scorers of the next goal, and nearly did so when Andy Robertson channelled TAA to set Gakpo away. City’s sense of general confusion was perhaps typified by the fact it was Matheus Nunes making the last-ditch tackle to stop him.
Where City presented a sense of chaos and confusion, there was about Liverpool a calmness. We’re not about to do anything so daft as saying Arne Slot is better than Jurgen Klopp was, but there is a serenity to the Dutchman that his predecessor does not share. It might just be carrying over to the pitch and the terraces. We’ve said before that this team feels like a perfect blend of the two managers who have shaped it, but rarely has that felt more true than today.
That fast all-action start was pure Klopp, but the absolute sense of certainty you felt about their ability to see the job through came from the new manager. They are absolutely the real deal and are absolutely going to take some stopping from here.
14. The second goal was another catastrophe for City, losing the ball meekly in their own half before Ortega – who in truth did little wrong on an afternoon where error after error occurred in front of him – came charging out to challenge for a ball he was never winning. It was the most straightforward of penalty decisions, and the most straightforward of conversions from Salah as he found the bottom corner unerringly.
City had been fortunate to remain in the game for as long as they had, but now the Liverpool fans started having their fun.
15. As the Liverpool fans queried the long-term job prospects of the beleaguered City manager, wondering if perhaps the morning might bring grim tidings, Guardiola turned and raised six fingers to the Anfield crowd, presumably indicating his Premier League titles rather than how many games City have now lost in their last seven matches.
He repeated this to all corners of the ground after the final whistle, and it has to be a worry. It can’t be easy for a great manager to go through this kind of trauma, but going Full Mourinho is never the answer. Coming out after the game and going “It’s fine!” was also sub-optimal. It might not be as bad as Full Mourinho, but Full Ross Geller probably isn’t an ideal choice for an elite football manager either.
It really is an astonishing run now. There were clear signs in City’s early post-Rodri games that they might be in trouble, but nothing like this. The welcome return of Ruben Dias did precious little to restore any confidence in City’s troubled backline, and that is now at least two goals conceded in each of their last seven winless games.
They are only the third defending champions to lose four games in a row, and one of the others was Leicester. Liverpool did it as well, funnily enough, but when you’re doing something so bad that not even Chelsea in the depths of their 2015/16 Mourinho meltdown managed it then you have to be worried.
16. Were this anyone other than City, we’d be cheerfully ruling them out of the title race now. We’re not quite there with this lot, despite the very clear fact that some very dramatic things are going to have to happen to not just City but also Liverpool for it to happen. They have the muscle memory and that’s not to be entirely dismissed, even if it does currently appear to be all they’ve got.
Yet that is also the reason we have such faith in Liverpool’s ability to stay the course. Liverpool might not have as many players as City who know all about winning the Premier League with their current club, but they’ve got a lot more than anyone else who might have a crack at it.
The title is not yet Liverpool’s, of course it isn’t. But it is without doubt now theirs to lose.
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