A fantastic first half from Liverpool saw them go three-nil up inside thirty minutes to effectively put the Champions League tie between themselves and Manchester City to bed already. Guardiola got his tactics wrong and paid the price for it, a case of it happening again for him in Europe.
When the Champions League Quarter-finals draw was made, the most anticipated match for many fans was the all-English clash between Liverpool and Manchester City. The two games that had already been played in the Premier League featured plenty of goals as Manchester City put five past a ten-men Liverpool to comprehensively win at the Etihad.
Then Liverpool returned the favour by becoming the first team to defeat Manchester City in the league this season with a 4-3 win at Anfield. Both teams feature sides with great attacks although much has been made about both sides defences, which could only work well for the neutrals with goals expected to come by the plenty.
And that is exactly what happened as Liverpool stormed to a three-nil lead inside thirty minutes at Anfield. Manchester City failed to cope with Liverpool’s intense pressing and capitalized on any mistake that the league leaders made – with the first goal coming from a mistake by Leroy Sane where he mishit a long diagonal ball and another mistake by Kyle Walker who failed to clear the ball away from danger, allowing Muhammad Salah to continue his terrific season with a goal.
The second coming from another horrendous mistake where Alex-Oxlade Chamberlain was allowed all the space in the world by City’s defence to rocket home a stunning shot to double the lead, City’s defenders were too slow off the mark to close him down.
City’s entire performance was terrible, they couldn’t cope with the relentless pressure from Liverpool and constantly misplaced passes, even when Salah went off injured and Liverpool sat back to take off the pressure, City never got into the game or even got a shot on target. It’s hard to see where City can get back into the tie from here on out, they do have the ability to put four goals past Liverpool in the return leg but to do that along with ensuring that Liverpool do not score as well to get the crucial away goal will take an incredible feat.
Much will be made about the events before the game where sections of the Liverpool fan base attacked the City team bus in an embarrassing attempt to intimidate the players, but Pep Guardiola will have to take the blame for this one with his decisions tactically for City.
Guardiola dropped an in-form Raheem Sterling to the bench in favour of sticking Ilkay Gundogan on the wing in an attempt to apparently negate Andy Robertson from bombarding forward up the pitch along with being able to control even more possession for City in midfield.
The issue with this comes from the fact that Walker would have to play higher up the pitch, leaving Laporte playing as a left-back to tuck inside to form a back three to negate any gaps in behind and thus leaving Sane completely isolated against Trent Alexander-Arnold.
Guardiola did seem to admit to this mistake by taking Gundogan off in the second-half for Sterling, but it didn’t seem to amount to anything. One would have thought that he might have switched Sane from the left over to the right with Sterling go onto the left, considering Sane was having no success against Alexander-Arnold and to allow him to cut into the box but Guardiola didn’t do this at all.
In the end, Guardiola suffered the same problems that he suffered from in his previous encounter with Liverpool at Anfield – where Liverpool forced City into continuous mistakes from their intense pressing and broke up any rhythm that they like to build up against other teams. City suffered the same problems and Guardiola failed to adequately address the problem and whilst some will point to the fact that City did win 5-0 against Liverpool early in the season, that only happened as a result of a Sadio Mane red card that greatly affected Liverpool who were in the game up until that point and could have taken the lead had Salah taken his clear-cut chance.
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While one could suggest that City will only go out of the competition because Jurgen Klopp has his number and that Liverpool are a great side, which they are, this game seems to symbolize a much deeper problem for Guardiola, one that dates back to his time as Bayern Munich manager where they were eliminated each year through tactical blunders from Guardiola and paid heavily for those blunders.
His Bayern Munich team were eliminated in 2014 after Guardiola gave in to his player’s desires to convert back to the Jupp Heynecks system for the second leg of their semi-final game against Real Madrid, an all-out attack that was designed to overthrow the 1-0 deficit and Bayern got punished for doing so. Guardiola later admitted it was one of his biggest mistakes and a big regret on his part.
Similar to the following year and his Bayern Munich side attempted to counteract Barcelona’s front three in Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suarez by switching to a back three that featured Bayern’s defenders tightly man-marking Barcelona’s front three which ended up being a disaster for Bayern and Barcelona ran riot on them, another semi-final defeat for Guardiola where he attempted to spring a tactical surprise and failed horrendously doing so. Even Monaco last season were able to put three goals against City at the Etihad and put them out in the round of sixteen – City were unable to cope defensively with the relentless attacking powers of the French champions.
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There is no dispute that Guardiola is one of, if not the, best manager in the world and has been for the last decade but there has been a trend where Guardiola gets his tactical decisions completely wrong in Europe and it backfires terribly in his face. Despite the entire media parade about City potentially winning the Quadruple, this will not be a disappointing season for City who have completely dismantled the entire Premier League and could feasibly win the league on Saturday against Manchester United.
But for Pep, this will be startlingly like his Bayern Munich tenure where his team ran rampant on the league but failed to achieve anything in Europe. The loss to Liverpool at Anfield in the league didn’t particularly mean much in the grand scheme of things for City, but it should have been a lesson for him for this game and again, his tactical blunder will see his team go out early in Europe again.