Liverpool travel to Manchester City having missed an opportunity to move further clear at the top, as the ghost of title races past looms…
LIVERPOOL go to Manchester City this Sunday.
It’s a fixture which has had everything. It’s been the highest stakes game but of what? Not chess – too methodical and laboured.
Maybe Robot Wars. Two machines smashing into each other.
No, no. It’s more eloquent than that. It’s been beautifully intense and nerve shredding and so, so important.
I can’t think of an apt comparison because this game truly has stood alone. Even in a football sense, it’s a rivalry marked by the sheer standards and quality of football rather than a deep hatred or managerial rivalry.
City and Liverpool has often felt like the end-game. The true measure of your credentials and sometimes a winner-takes-all battle as early as November.
That’s what these two served up.
There have been breaks in play. Often when Liverpool and Jürgen Klopp uncharacteristically faltered. Anfield in 2020-21 and The Etihad in 2022-23 stand out as abominations where The Reds turned up vulnerable and got ripped to shreds in a way this fixture did.
It was a reminder of how quickly things can change. Suddenly, when you’re no longer the first or second best team in the league and find yourself the fourth or fifth, the levels become so apparent.
Klopp has gone, as we know. But something else is massively perturbing the usual order. City have lost Rodri, and by virtue themselves.
They currently sit 17 points off Liverpool in sixth. They’re improving since January’s transfer splurge, but they have the unavoidable stench of a team which has stayed together too long.
They’ve been weather-beaten, slow and weak. They’ve shunned the very thing which makes them great: the football. They are, by their own standards, out of control.
Pep Guardiola’s Man City. You never thought you could utter such words. It’s a reminder of the need to constantly check yourself. Of how none of us are infallible.
Yet we go there full of trepidation. We expect 100-point-City to reemerge out of nowhere. Liverpool, now the biggest kill in town for Nicky Weaver and Shaun Goater’s men.
I’m being obtuse. You don’t want to hear about how lucky we are. We should already be out of sight, you tell me. Too many gifts.
I can relate. Villa was the latest in a mini-series of examples where games have become fraught and avoidably difficult.
But this fixture, these two teams, skewed our vision of normality to the extent that this now somewhat traditional and normal title race feels incredibly fragile.
It’s meant to be like this. Liverpool are eight clear of Arsenal. That might dwindle. They are currently struggling to find an extra gear during a gruelling February.
There should be margin for error, they should not be perfect.
But this fixture told you that’s not allowed. It told you that February onwards is a race to the finish line. It’s getting the whip out with 10 hurdles still to jump. Give me everything you have, now.
Of course, none of this is a crumb of comfort to the fact that Liverpool look leggy, or that Nico Gonzalez can seemingly restore some of City’s control, or to Arsenal hosting West Ham.
But City’s demise remains a reminder of one thing and one thing only: opportunity.
We will assume they will be a 90-plus-point team again next season, and the challenge will be far greater with less margin for error.
We will think, ‘if we can’t win it this year, who knows when we will again’. Arsenal have never broken 90 points under Mikel Arteta. You can guarantee they’ll be thinking the exact same.
The immediate concerns are that City continue their slow resurgence and have a lovely day out at our expense.
But there is margin here. Nobody is perfect, not in the way they used to be. I prefer that.
Perfection nearly broke Klopp and Guardiola. They smashed into each other, broke minds and bodies and it was exhilarating and breathless, but it’s not this.
It needs the right amount of energy, luck and the highest levels we can possibly achieve with this coach and group of players for it to happen. But our fate won’t be defined in February or March, and probably not even April.
It won’t be easy, but it’s such an exciting position to be in. One which is truly unique.
Our hosts know all about it. They would do anything to feel it again.
Buy Dan Morgan’s book ‘Jürgen Said To Me’ on Klopp, Liverpool and the remaking of a city…
