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....
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...
Sam Allardyce has lifted Everton to ninth in the Premier League and José Mourinho’s Manchester United sit second but Pep Guardiola has altered fans’ expectationsAfter five minutes of Brighton’s game at Goodison Park on Saturday with the score at 0-0, a passionate and extremely vocal Evertonian took the opportunity to run to within five yards of the dugout I was sitting in and vent his anger and frustration by screaming “Get out of my fucking club” directly at Sam Allardyce – the man who, in my opinion, has successfully done the job required and expected of him. The Everton manager has stabilised a huge club that had lost its way to the point where relegation was a distinct possibility based...