Man City 115 Fair Play 0 – When Liverpool Went To The Etihad* (*Not Actual Score)

Manchester City vs. Liverpool: *Bumper* Post-Match Analysis

Paul Tomkins, Andrew Beasley, Daniel Rhodes and other TTT regulars will give their thoughts on the match for 24 hours after the game, so the article received via email is unlikely to be the final version. There's statistics from the match and videos too.

Post-Match Thoughts

Paul Tomkins

Ah, the glorious fairness of the Premier League.

Another post-international 12:30 away for Liverpool (the 14th in that time slot to anyone else's maximum of six in Jürgen Klopp's reign), to be played with a totally jet-lagged South American spine, with a fourth on the bench, with – oh look – a Manchester ref doing the fixture yet again.

(In this paragraph, in my only comment about refs today, I wanted to note that I only checked back eight games, but that's now eight times in a row the two clubs' league head-to-heads have been reffed and/or VARred by someone from Manchester; sometimes it was both. And while that can sometimes help Liverpool, if the officials are trying hard to not look biased – and Chris Kavanagh was very good today in general, and especially in correctly disallowing a City goal for a slight but decisive high-arm push on Alisson – it’s still an unacceptable situation, given that no Merseyside refs are ever involved. Imagine if the shoe was on the other foot. Would that be taken as “fair”?)

Alisson had a tough fortnight of various long-haul flights and high-pressure games, while Erling Haaland and Ederson had their feet up, pulling a prime Ryan Giggs (not to be confused with Giggs’ post-career predictions).

Bar one sensational save, Alisson generally played like he'd had a busy fortnight with the chaotic Brazilian national team, and his late hamstring strain suggests as much. Meanwhile, Haaland and Ederson’s serious injuries vanished into the Manchester mist.

Darwin Núñez had the same sapping flights as his three amigos, and two games of ‘murderball’ for Marcelo Bielsa for Uruguay. Alexis Mac Allister was playing late into the night with Argentina in Brazil.

With Liverpool now having gone to City, Spurs, Newcastle, Chelsea and Brighton, and no major clubs yet having to come to what is increasingly ‘Fortress Anfield’ (but European competition sides Aston Villa and West Ham have, as well as the hassle of a Mersey derby), this was never going to be a title-decider.

City, with all their players who were too injured for international duty straight back in the XI, were playing games in many senses.

But against all that, the Reds came away with a well-deserved draw.

Indeed, it feels like City are stagnating (a fraction) and Liverpool improving rapidly, based on previous encounters. Obviously City were lethal at home, but with 23 wins on the bounce throughout 2023, they were bounced out of two points here by Trent Alexander-Arnold. Here’s to 2024.

Again, for Liverpool to be just a point behind City after going to their place, as well as going to Chelsea, Spurs, Newcastle and Brighton, and having had four players harshly sent off this season (and the biggest game-changing VAR mistake in history as well as two soft reds in the same game), whilst rebuilding the side, is nothing short of sensational.

The next step is consistency, and handling the pressure of the chase.

That said, this what pretty much all bar the midfielders and a couple of strikers are used to; albeit some new signings came from high-pressure clubs – Ryan Gravenberch doesn't need to be told about how things work at title-winners after playing for Ajax at 16 and joining from Bayern Munich. Dominik Szoboszlai played for a Champions League club in Germany and captains his country. And Alexis Mac Allister made World Cup-winning Argentina tick.

So, as I will focus on for the game below, there are a lot of positives, in what was a hard-earned and merited draw, against the team with the asterisks in waiting.

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