Premier League: Man City must stop the rot at Anfield

Spurs beating Manchester City may not have been entirely unexpected. Spurs beating the champions out the door – at the Etihad – was not on the bingo card.

The champions’ demolition did not come from some haphazard or bizarre set of events, or from having their ranks decimated by red cards. No, Tottenham Hotspur, the side that performed so ineptly in the 2-1 defeat at the hands of third-from-bottom Ipswich Town last time out, comprehensively dismantled Pep Guardiola’s men with a mixture of enthusiasm and flare so infrequently glimpsed from Ange Postecoglou’s side.

Two goals from James Maddison in the first half was followed up with a strike from Pedro Porro on 52 minutes. The cherry on the top of the rout sundae dropped by Brennan Johnson, three minutes into added time. It was such an accomplished performance; it must make other sides in the league grateful that Spurs are so.. well, ‘Spursy’ in their consistency. If they ever managed to figure out a way to maintain form, then watch out everyone else in the league.

Wide open

Anyway, the result threw the cat in among the pigeons in the title-race and allowed Liverpool, the next day, go into an eight-point lead in the Premier League, once they eventually managed to get the better of Southampton. As we predicted last week, Liverpool put in their usual post international-break performance and barely got away with the win from the bottom-placed team in the league.

But for Mo Salah’s brilliant determination to show Liverpool owners, FSG, the errors of their ways in not giving him a renewed contract, then tomorrow’s encounter between the Merseysiders and City could have been about whether Pep’s side could cut the gap to two points rather than them worrying if they can stop Liverpool from extending it to 11 at Anfield.

Midweek, City looked to steady the ship by collecting their first win in a long time by seeing off a good but beatable Feyenoord side in the Champions League. And for 75 minutes Pep Guardiola and his side looked like they had accomplished the task. 3-0 up with 15 minutes to go, game over, crisis over. Unfortunately for City, nobody told the Feyenoord players that the task was done, and they proceeded to perform the comeback of the season.

Errors

As in the Spurs match, an awkward job at dealing with a pass saw Josko Gvardiol, in the City defence, gift the Dutch side a way back into the game.

It was a sequence of errors that had Pep burying his face in his hands which then seemed to signal to his team that a collapse was coming. Their heads down, they proceeded to lose their composure completely, with the usual rock-solid Ederson, in goal, the chief culprit in the collapse. Getting his angles wrong and running out into no man’s land, when better advised to stay on his line, the Dutch side suddenly had the game all square and them celebrating like they had won. Which for City’s players must have felt like a defeat,

These things happen in sport, the unexpected is why we watch it. But we have not seen it with City before, especially in the Guardiola era. Even raising questions on whether Pep has somehow lost his winning touch, or worse?

Irish pride

Liverpool’s midweek Champions League performance, on the other hand, was sublime from their point of view. Thanks in no small part to the efforts of their Irish players, which saw Conor Bradley pocket world superstar Kylian Mbappe, and Cork keeper Caoimhin Kelleher make his third penalty save in as many matches, the Merseysiders finally knocked the Real Madrid monkey off their back and claimed the Champions League top spot to go with their Premier League pinnacle.

So, to tomorrow, the stage is set at Anfield for an epic tussle at the top of the table. A win for either side will not decide who wins the league, but it may confirm who loses it.

Liverpool are bound to be flying high from their performances thus far, especially at home. But any football fan will know the adage, ‘pride comes before the fall’, so they should definitely not take City’s horrible recent form for granted.

City are a wounded animal, and what better place than a full Anfield, full of cocky Scousers, to show that there is life left in the old champions yet. Beyond even the imperitive of quieting their rivals, City have to stop the rot now, out of the Carabao Cup, and struggling to hold their position in the Premier and Champions leagues, they do not want their season to be hanging by a thread on just the first day of December.

Arsenal will be looking on with interest, whatever the result.