There was a lull in the noise, a break in the Anfield atmosphere, when a defiant chant emerged from a corner near Stefan Ortega’s goal. “City, City, the best team in the land,” came a chorus first aired in the years when the notion was fanciful. For much of the last few years, they have often been branded, sometimes by opponents, as the best team in the world.
Now that description is outdated, inaccurate, almost mocking. Now they are behind Brighton in the table, 11 points adrift of Liverpool, their title race run weeks before Christmas. They have lost six of their last seven games in all competitions, not won against anyone since Erik ten Hag was still Manchester United manager.
Their Carabao Cup exit at Tottenham aside, there is a case for calling a 2-0 defeat at Anfield their most respectable result in the worst run of Pep Guardiola’s managerial career. They are not accustomed to losing to Bournemouth or Brighton, to conceding four at home to anyone or away to Sporting CP. A defeat at Anfield, Guardiola’s personal house of horrors, is nothing new.
If the damning part was not the margin as much as the manner, the instructive element came in Guardiola’s reaction. His histrionics at Anfield have inspired memes. Here he was subdued, stood with his hands in his pockets, a passive Pep resigned to his fate. This time, it seemed, he arrived without hope. His only defiance came in the dying minutes. As Anfield serenaded him with “sacked in the morning”, his riposte was to raise six fingers, one for each of his Premier League titles. There will not be a seventh in 2025.
He has lost at Anfield with great sides. Now he was defeated with one doing an increasingly convincing impression of a terrible team. They were flattered by the scoreline. City were battered before they were beaten. Not by Guardiola’s greatest rival, either, but by a newcomer to this fixture. Jurgen Klopp had the bravery to attack City: others overcame Guardiola’s team by ambushing them, whereas Liverpool assaulted them. Arne Slot adopted a similar approach. Liverpool began at a ferocious pace; some of City’s players, ageing before our eyes, lack pace.
Guardiola has described City as fragile defensively. They were weak, physically overpowered. They were unable to stop Virgil van Dijk at set pieces. There was the space behind City’s defence and the space in front of it, with Dominik Szoboszlai forever free in what used to be Rodri’s territory, the area between Guardiola’s two banks of four. And that tactic, redolent of an old-fashioned English 4-4-2, highlighted the way City have lost their identity as well as games.
And this was a sixth defeat in seven. It has fallen apart: suddenly, spectacularly, maybe seismically. For the newer breed of City fans, it may feel as if they’re not really here. There is an end-of-an-era feel about this team; with every setback, it is harder to attribute results simply to injuries. This contained every facet of City’s decline: the ageing side, the unbalanced squad, the poor recruitment over the last 18 months, the sense that, besides wearing out anyone who aspired to take their crown, City have exhausted themselves.
There was a punishment selection, Guardiola dropping Ederson and Josko Gvardiol after their errors against Feyenoord, but confused thinking contributed to an incoherent performance.
Guardiola often picks from a position of strength. Here he selected from one of weakness. He picked Ilkay Gundogan because, without Rodri and Mateo Kovacic, it is hard to name a side without him. He picked Matheus Nunes because he can run to compensate for the reality that Gundogan can’t. He picked Rico Lewis on the right wing to try and shield Kyle Walker, but neither stopped Cody Gakpo from scoring. He picked Nathan Ake to be a better defensive left-back than Gvardiol, but he was destroyed by Salah; by the time the Egyptian set up Gakpo’s opener, the Dutchman had swapped positions with Manuel Akanji. He picked Ortega to bring better decision-making than Ederson in goal, but the understudy conceded the penalty for Salah’s second goal.
If City came intent on keeping a clean sheet, the tactic came unstuck as early as the 12th minute. Yet if it was a damage-limitation strategy, it hampered them in attack. For the first time in the top flight since 2010, they had no shots in the opening 38 minutes. Which was explained in part by the personnel. There was a time when City’s wingers were Raheem Sterling and Leroy Sane, another when they were Phil Foden and Bernardo Silva. Now they were Nunes and Lewis, neither really a winger, neither contributing anything in the final third. Guardiola held Jeremy Doku and Savinho back, as if fearing a thrashing if they started. Instead, Liverpool pulled clear when the game grew more open after they came on.
They have beaten Real Madrid and Manchester City in five days, the sides who, a few weeks ago, could uncontroversially be called the finest in the world. But with every game it becomes clearer: Liverpool are now the best team in the land.
