Pep Guardiola messed up with his team selection but perhaps he had to. Jurgen Klopp remarkably keeps those Liverpool plates spinning.
1) Finally, another one to add to the set. In the six years since Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp took their respective posts at Manchester City and Liverpool, the two teams had played each other 15 times. There had been scorelines of 0-0, 1-0, 1-1, 2-1, 2-2, 3-0, 3-1, 4-0, 4-1, 4-3 and 5-0. Both sides had won five meetings. The average goals scored per game was 3.2.
A five-goal thriller was apropos for one of their biggest games. In terms of immediate high stakes, Guardiola and Klopp have rarely clashed in such an important match during their times in England. But that barely seemed to impact upon their general approach against each other: focus on their own considerable strengths and expect them to outweigh any underlying weaknesses. Manchester City raise the standard of Liverpool and vice versa, with no Machiavellian thought of trying to cancel anyone out.
Events earlier in the week made these two managers the current longest-serving in the Premier League. This was a riotous 90-minute festival of recognition for such dynastical brilliance that should still have at least a couple more years left to go.
2) But this game perhaps best underlined the difference between a 3-1 Champions League advantage that could be carried into a home game against Benfica, and a 1-0 lead that had to be defended at Atletico Madrid. Both Liverpool and Manchester City made seven changes; the former to a makeshift team and the latter to a full-strength one. That was the telling contrast.
More instructive was that Manchester City made five alterations from the previous Liverpool game – Zack Steffen for Ederson, Nathan Ake for Aymeric Laporte, Oleksandr Zinchenko for Kyle Walker, Fernandinho for Rodri and Jack Grealish for Kevin De Bruyne – while Liverpool swapped only Joel Matip for Ibrahima Konate, Jordan Henderson for Naby Keita and Luis Diaz…
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