Liverpool were more disciplined, organised and mature than Manchester City, with Dejan Lovren shining light on the tactical input their manager had at half-time at the Etihad StadiumThe Liverpool dressing room was a predictably emotional place around 8.30pm on Tuesday, after a first half in which their passiveness and Manchester City’s excellence had threatened their hold on the Champions League quarter-final. However, while elsewhere in the Etihad Stadium Pep Guardiola was combusting and getting himself sent to a padded seat, Jürgen Klopp was silent. He had a victory against the finest team in the land to plot.Klopp the gurning, manic cheerleader is an image the Liverpool manager regrettably accepts he cannot shake but, as Virgil van Dijk said before the...
Pep Guardiola’s half-time bust-up helped bring Manchester City’s Champions League house of cards crashing downAnd fade to blue. Two billion pounds, 10 years and an entire Gulf state marketing plan in the making, in the end Manchester City’s best shot so far at becoming the champions of Europe was extinguished in half an hour of tailspin at Anfield and the reverberations from two minutes of self-immolating fury from Pep Guardiola at the Etihad.Guardiola was a little hoarse, a little overwrought at the end of this decelerating 2-1 defeat. He insisted he had not insulted the referee Antonio Mateu Lahoz in the moments before he was sent off at half-time for remonstrating in an aggressively graceless manner. Related: Liverpool go through...
After two seasons the Liverpool manager has found a system that works, led by the £75m signing Virgil van Dijk“If we have to score five goals to win, then so be it,” Vincent Kompany said when it was put to him that a single Liverpool goal at the Etihad on Tuesday would surely leave Manchester City with too much to do to progress in the Champions League. “We won’t stop believing. We will still take a positive attitude into the game and try to get through.”One can only admire the City captain’s confidence, though his assessment overlooks the fact that his side did not manage a single attempt on target in the first leg of the quarter-final at Anfield and the...
By the benchmark they have set, Manchester City were terrible at Liverpool – light up front, porous at the back and less than tigerish in midfield – and they need to react quicklyOnly four managers have outwitted Pep Guardiola this season, and while Wigan’s Paul Cook, Shakhtar Donetsk’s Paulo Fonseca and Basel’s Raphaël Wicky were perhaps unexpected beneficiaries of propitious circumstances, Jürgen Klopp has done it twice to order.The stakes could not have been much higher than in the last encounter either, and the emphatic nature of Liverpool’s win in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final gives some credence to Klopp’s insistence that but for Sadio Mané’s unfortunate dismissal at the Etihad in September, Manchester City might not...
Manchester City manager’s attempt to calm Liverpool’s fury by starting with Ilkay Gündoğan contributed to his Champions League first-leg downfall at AnfieldThirteen games played, seven won, one drawn. No other manager has a record against Pep Guardiola anywhere near as good as that of Jürgen Klopp. Nobody else has beaten Guardiola seven times, or six, or even five. Only José Mourinho has come out on top four times against him. So why? What is it about the ferocity of Klopp’s sides that has so often presented a problem for Guardiola?In part it is that Klopp attacks. To sit back against a team such as City, Klopp has said, to aim to absorb pressure, is to look to win the lottery....