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...
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...
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....
Pep Guardiola’s safety-first approach handed the initiative to Liverpool and they seized it with vigour on another momentous European night at AnfieldThis was the wrong time and place for making concessions. The team coaches were re-routed away from the King Harry pub on safety grounds by Merseyside Police but Manchester City were still ‘welcomed’ to Anfield with bottles, flares and a public apology from Liverpool. Pep Guardiola made one of his own, sacrificing the penetrating speed of Raheem Sterling for the more measured influence of Ilkay Gündoğan, but that backfired, too, as Liverpool blitzed the runaway leaders of the Premier League in the Champions League quarter-final first leg.Only Jürgen Klopp held firm with his tactics and approach. Only his team...
Both the German and Pep Guardiola are likely to be adventurous in a Champions League quarter-final that will revive Liverpool memories of great European battles of the pastTimes have certainly changed since the September night in 1978 when Nottingham Forest’s team coach rolled up late to a European Cup tie at Liverpool with Bill Shankly sat up front alongside Brian Clough. The players who usurped Liverpool as European champions that season never asked Clough why he invited the Anfield icon on board, though suspected it was part of their manager’s attempts to defuse the tension and animosity that surrounded the visit to Bob Paisley’s holders. All-English European ties have tended to carry a similar edge ever since. Anfield on Wednesday...