Kyle Walker endured a tough afternoon for Manchester City
Kyle Walker endured a tough afternoon for Manchester City
Shortly after Cody Gakpo had opened the scoring amidst more abject defending from Manchester City, Phil Foden had to receive treatment for a knock to the knee.
During the break in play, Kyle Walker animatedly approached a few team-mates, presumably to try and rev them up, give them a telling-off, or whatever. They did not look interested.
This is a City side that is having a season off. This is a City side that has lost its sense of urgency. Perhaps that is what winning the title four times on the spin does to players.
And with a lack of urgency comes a lack of care. The champions have probably misplaced more passes this season than they have over the duration of the previous four. While it is a touch understandable, the drop-off is still startling.
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City have won the Premier League in six of the past seven seasons yet, for at least half an hour, they were probably as poor as any side that has visited Anfield this season. Liverpool were mightily impressive in that spell, to be fair.
Since Conor Bradley’s tackle on Kylian Mbappe, there has been an orderly queue of pundits suggesting Trent Alexander-Arnold would not be greatly missed if he headed to Madrid. Which is nonsense, of course.
Up against Matheus Nunes for the best part of an hour, he did not have an awful lot of defending to do, freeing him to concentrate on his passing repertoire. And what a repertoire it is - the ball to Mo Salah for a pre-assist was not the only long-range beauty he struck.
Alexander-Arnold had more testing work to occupy his time after Jeremy Doku had replaced Nunes, a change that Pep Guardiola should have made at half-time. Indeed, it is hard to understand how Nunes was preferred to Doku from that start.
Mo Salah was on target for Liverpool at Anfield ( Image: John Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
Surely the best way to negate the threat posed by Alexander-Arnold’s passing range is to keep the England full-back occupied? Doku gave Alexander-Arnold a fairly torrid time and after 15 minutes, Arne Slot had seen enough and threw Trent’s towel in.
Soon after the change, Liverpool put the game beyond doubt when more shocking defending led to Stefan Ortega throwing himself in front of Luis Diaz, who accepted the invitation, left his leg trailing and Salah obliged from the spot.
In terms of the balance of second half play, it might have been a little harsh on City but there was only one team that looked anything like a title-winning outfit and it was not the holders.
As soon as Salah’s spot-kick went in, Guardiola sent on Jack Grealish and Kevin de Bruyne and City looked just a little bit like the City of yesteryear. But in addition to their truly shocking defensive form, City are struggling to find a scoring threat from any position other than the one occupied by Erling Haaland - and he was not at the races at Anfield.
Cody Gakpo opened the scoring the league leaders (
Image:
Andrew Powell/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
In fact, of the starting eleven, only Haaland has scored a Premier League goal this season. In the same way Guardiola once considered Spurs to be the Harry Kane team, his is now becoming the Haaland team.
And when Haaland is not finding and converting opportunities, they are in big trouble. It is not the sort of trouble that is going to get Guardiola the sack, as most of Anfield were suggesting late on.
In response to those taunts, Guardiola raised six fingers, presumably to represent the number of Premier League titles he has won. Fair enough. But it is not going to be seven any time soon, Pep, that is for sure.
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