There is something going to feel very strange about Liverpool playing Manchester City on Sunday.
Jürgen Klopp won’t be there.
Pep Guardiola won’t be there.
And remarkably, this will be the first Premier League meeting between Liverpool and Manchester City since March 2015 in which neither manager is in the dugout.
Think about that for a moment.
For more than a decade, whenever Liverpool played Manchester City, you almost automatically thought about Klopp and Guardiola.
The two managers became the faces of one of the greatest rivalries the Premier League has ever seen.
Now they’re both gone.
And perhaps because of everything that has happened recently, I’m starting to look back at that rivalry slightly differently.
Klopp and Guardiola pushed each other to another level
I’ll be honest, I absolutely loved those battles.
Even when Liverpool lost, there was something special about watching Klopp’s team go toe-to-toe with Guardiola’s City.
These weren’t ordinary title races.
Liverpool finished with 97 points in 2018/19 and still didn’t win the league.
Then in 2021/22, Liverpool collected 92 points and again finished one point behind City.
Those campaigns were ridiculous.
Liverpool were producing totals that would have won the Premier League in most seasons.
They just happened to be competing against Manchester City.
The Premier League itself has described the Klopp-Guardiola rivalry as one that pushed both teams to new heights, while Guardiola famously said before Klopp’s departure that Liverpool had made him a better manager.
And that is why I don’t want the recent developments to make us pretend those Liverpool teams weren’t incredible.
They were.
But City’s achievements are now being questioned
This is where things become much more complicated.
Manchester City have now been found guilty by an independent commission of serious breaches of the Premier League’s financial rules over a nine-season period.
The commission found that City used sham commercial agreements, filed misstated accounts and concealed the true state of their finances, while also breaching Premier League and UEFA spending limits.
City have appealed the ruling and continue to deny wrongdoing.
That process is not finished.
So I’m certainly not going to start handing Liverpool trophies from the past.
But it would be ridiculous to pretend the findings don’t change the way we look at that era.
Because Liverpool were the team repeatedly standing closest to City.
And Klopp was the manager who kept pushing them.
Which makes Klopp’s achievements even more interesting
This is the bit I keep coming back to.
If Guardiola’s Manchester City achievements are now under a cloud because of what the independent commission found, Klopp’s Liverpool record deserves to be looked at again too.
Not because Klopp needs somebody to give him extra medals.
He doesn’t.
Not because Liverpool supporters need to pretend every title race was stolen from us.
We don’t know what the eventual consequences of the City case will be.
But Klopp’s Liverpool competed against a club that has now been found guilty of serious financial breaches covering part of that period.
And despite that, Liverpool still managed to win the Premier League.
They won it with 99 points in 2019/20.
They won the Champions League.
They won the FA Cup.
They won the League Cup.
They won the Club World Cup.
They became one of the best teams in the world.
And they did it while constantly having to chase a Manchester City side that seemed almost impossible to catch.
That makes Klopp’s achievement look even more impressive to me.
Imagine what Liverpool achieved without having to win everything
That’s another thing I think gets forgotten.
Liverpool supporters sometimes talk about Klopp’s era as though it was disappointing because we didn’t win more Premier League titles.
That’s crazy when you actually look at the numbers.
Liverpool lost the title by one point despite getting 97 points.
Then lost it by one point again after getting 92.
Most managers would dream of producing one season like that.
Klopp did it twice.
And he still left Liverpool having won practically everything there was to win.
The Premier League.
The Champions League.
The FA Cup.
The League Cup.
The Club World Cup.
European football.
Domestic football.
And, perhaps most importantly, he restored Liverpool to being a genuine force again.
Sunday feels like the end of an era
That’s why Sunday’s game is going to feel different.
Andoni Iraola is now Liverpool’s manager.
City have moved on from Guardiola.
The old rivalry is finished.
There won’t be Klopp on the touchline screaming at his players.
There won’t be Guardiola pacing around the technical area.
There won’t be that familiar handshake before the game.
Instead, we get two completely different managers trying to create their own history.
And I actually think that’s quite exciting.
Because Iraola doesn’t need to become Klopp.
He needs to become Iraola.
Liverpool don’t need to recreate 2019.
They need to build something new.
But that doesn’t mean we should forget what came before.
I think Klopp deserves even more credit now
I’ve written before about Klopp’s legacy.
But the more I think about everything that happened during his Liverpool reign, the more remarkable it becomes.
He took Liverpool from a club that had fallen away from the very top of English football and turned them into champions of England and Europe.
He built a team capable of collecting 97 and 92 points in seasons when they didn’t win the league.
He competed with one of the greatest club sides the Premier League has ever seen.
And now that City’s financial story has taken such a dramatic turn, I think it is fair to ask whether we have properly appreciated just how difficult Klopp’s job actually was.
Maybe we haven’t.
And that’s why I’m not interested in rewriting Klopp’s history.
I’m interested in appreciating it.
Let the new rivalry begin
Sunday will be the first Liverpool-Manchester City Premier League meeting in more than 11 years without Klopp or Guardiola involved.
That’s incredible when you think about it.
Those two men dominated this fixture.
They gave us some of the greatest games, title races and moments of the Premier League era.
Now they’re gone.
But their legacy remains.
And whatever eventually happens with Manchester City’s appeal, nobody can take away what Klopp achieved at Liverpool.
If anything, these latest developments have reminded me just how extraordinary it was.
Klopp didn’t just compete with Guardiola.
He pushed him.
He pushed Liverpool.
He pushed the Premier League.
And he created a Liverpool team that will be remembered for generations.
Now Iraola gets his chance.
A new Liverpool-Manchester City era starts on Sunday.
And I’m fascinated to see what it looks like.
Because for the first time in more than a decade, we’re watching Liverpool and City without Klopp and Guardiola.
And somehow, that makes this one feel like the beginning of something completely new.
Jamie (The Kopite View)
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