“Another great Liverpool-Man City game,” said Arne Slot, who apparently still hasn’t noticed that his supporters hate listening to him talking up matches they lose.
But this was not another great Liverpool-Manchester City game, not compared to previous instalments in the series. It was a bad game, belatedly enlivened by a comical last 20 minutes. City produced probably their worst Anfield performance of the Guardiola decade and still came away with three points. You could almost say it was that rare game where both teams deserved to lose.
The first hour consisted of a drab series of pre-scripted passing and pressing sequences with no individual flair. Not long ago it was the matches between City and Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal that set the standard in this kind of high-level Premier League dreariness. The clash of Guardiola and Guardiola Lite is seldom an exploding-oil-drums kind of affair.
But then Arteta broke bad, and reconfigured Arsenal towards the concussive powerball that has sent them to the top of the Premier League. The mantle of Guardiola Lite has been taken over by Slot, who paid tribute to his victorious opponents as “the best team in England in ball-possession.” Jurgen Klopp used to say that kind of thing about City too, but his team were never trying to compete with City at their own game.
With 15 minutes to go, Dominik Szoboszlai broke the stalemate with that stunning free kick, a moment of individual inspiration the game needed but never seemed likely to produce. Just as the Anfield crowd had started to believe it was going to be their day, City hit back, Haaland and Bernardo Silva combining to equalise with a Niall Quinn-Uwe Rösler tribute goal.
The game did produce at least one more memorable moment, though not for a good reason, as Szoboszlai joined what must be an exclusive list of players who have been sent off for denying a goalscoring opportunity after an actual goal. In a moment of supreme pedantic absurdity, VAR intervened to punish the supposed denial of a goalscoring opportunity by denying a goal.
Szoboszlai maybe deserved the red card for the sheer stupidity of his decision to foul Erling Haaland outside the box to stop him reaching Rayan Cherki’s dribbling, goal-bound pass. Now he gets to sit out the next game, and maybe Liverpool’s vaunted analytics team can make productive use of the downtime by explaining the numbers behind why there really isn’t much point taking a red card to stop 1-2 turning into 1-3 in the 99th minute.
Of course Szoboszlai already understands that, but in the moment he had succumbed to the familiar hysteria that has characterised Liverpool at crunch moments all throughout the season.
The same thing had happened to Alisson Becker, one of the most experienced players on the pitch, who first conceded a penalty with an ill-judged rush into Matheus Nunes and then, in some misguided attempt to make amends, played the last two minutes of the game in attacking midfield, a decision that led ultimately to Szoboszlai’s sending off.
Manchester City's Erling Haaland hits a penalty kick past Liverpool's goalkeeper Alisson Becker. Photograph: Paul Ellis/Getty
Manchester City's Erling Haaland hits a penalty kick past Liverpool's goalkeeper Alisson Becker. Photograph: Paul Ellis/Getty
Haaland’s penalty was the fourth time this season Liverpool had conceded a 90th-minute winner, equalling the Premier League record held jointly by Watford 17-18 (who finished 14th), West Ham 20-21 (6th), Watford 21-22 (relegated) and Southampton 24-25 (Russell Martin).
It’s awkward company for title-holders who spent £450 million on new players over the summer to be keeping. Liverpool have won six of the last 19 Premier League games and have now fully detached from the Champions League-bound top five. Slot, with his provincial bank-manager demeanour, has proved unable to dispel a gathering mood of crisis.
Last week saw the club seeking to project a united front, as sporting director Richard Hughes and CEO Billy Hogan appeared alongside Slot in a panel interview in which the word “synergy” was thrown around a lot but little of interest was actually said.
Slot said that his aim is always to play “nice football”, which is not the only thing he’s failed to deliver this season. One of the things that supposedly recommended him to Liverpool was that he was the kind of coach that improves players – and in his first campaign, Ryan Gravenberch’s emergence as a quality controlling central midfielder bore this out.
Arne Slot reacts during the Premier League match between Liverpool and Manchester City at Anfield. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty
Arne Slot reacts during the Premier League match between Liverpool and Manchester City at Anfield. Photograph: Michael Regan/Getty
But this season, who at Liverpool has improved? More notable has been the collapse in form of several key players – Mohamed Salah, Alexis MacAllister, Ibrahima Konate, Cody Gakpo. As for the wonderkid Rio Ngumoha, he has hardly been seen since his goal against Newcastle last August.
Another quality formerly attributed to Slot was that his enlightened training methods and energy-efficient playstyle helped the players to stay injury-free. The events of this campaign have exposed this as the fate-tempting nonsense it always sounded like, as player after player has succumbed to injury, many of them serious.
These injuries, however, have exposed the fragility of a squad that Hughes and CEO of Football Michael Edwards have built according to a schizophrenic ethos that combines crypto-bro extravagance and self-defeating stinginess.
To reiterate: they spent £125 million on a new centre forward even though they’d already spent £85 million on another new centre forward and their coach only ever wants to play with one centre forward.
Bernardo Silva of Manchester City celebrates scoring his team's first goal. Photograph: Carl Recine/Getty
Bernardo Silva of Manchester City celebrates scoring his team's first goal. Photograph: Carl Recine/Getty
They then lost the chance to sign Marc Guehi in August over a matter of being unwilling to sweeten the deal for Crystal Palace with an extra couple of million pounds.
It now looks like they will miss out on qualification for the Champions League, which will cost at least another Isak-sized sum.
That will be badly timed given the continuing need to overhaul the squad. The decline in Liverpool’s squad depth in recent years is brutally apparent if you look at their bench for the 2022 Champions League final against Real Madrid: Roberto Firmino, Diogo Jota, Naby Keita, Joel Matip, Caoimhin Kelleher, James Milner, Curtis Jones, Harvey Elliott and more.
Of the nine substitutes named against City, Jones was the only bench player who looked a serious contender for the starting XI.
Missing the top five will mean the end of Slot’s time at Anfield, but looking at the longer-term prospects of this squad, the coach might be relieved to get out with what is left of his reputation still intact.