First-half goals from Brazilian duo Philippe Coutinho and Roberto Firmino following Eliaquim Mangala’s own goal stunned the hosts.
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Gary Neville says “fantastic” Liverpool executed Jurgen Klopp’s tactics brilliantly in their 4-1 victory over Man City. But with the expenditure made by City, it’s not unreasonable to expect greater options.
Saturday will be a big day for 20-year-old England worldwide Raheem Sterling, due to play against Liverpool for the first time since leaving them in the close-season for a fee that could rise to nearly 50 million pounds ($76.25 million). The managers cut two starkly contrasted figures and their teams’ performances aptly reflected this juxtaposition. Klopp was all action and animation in his technical area while City counterpart Manuel Pellegrini stood motionless for much of the match, hands in his pockets or with arms folded in frustration. The body language reflected the performances of their teams. Indeed, the absence of captain Vincent Kompany left the Citizens disorganised at the back, with Liverpool’s attacking trio of Roberto Firmino, Philippe Coutinho and Adam Lallana scintillating throughout.
The same applies to £29m summer signing Firmino.
The pair could have been forgiven for having their minds elsewhere and that appeared to be the case as a sequence of glaring errors in City’s defence allowed the visitors to take control of the game. It is a ploy that has reaped a rich reward. Today we did all wrong.
“What is important is that we can see and feel that there’s a development in our game”.
“It was hard to know why we played so badly. We try to do similar things but not always the same”. They simply couldn’t deal with Liverpool’s pressing and were continuously forced to give up the ball and make mistakes.
The only concern for Liverpool was the sight of Coutinho leaving the fray in the 68th minute after clutching the back of his thigh, but Klopp expressed optimism that it was only “a little bit of cramp”.
“It was far from flawless but was very good, we took our chances and made our goals”.
Klopp’s side, beaten 2-1 at home by Crystal Palace in their previous outing, have now won away at Chelsea and City, although they rose just one place in the standings to ninth. “In each moment when we let them play, you saw what happened then”, the German gaffer remarked. But when you win 4-1 against Man City it should be a very good performance – and it was very good.
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“We can do better than we did tonight – maybe not on the counter-attack because they were really good but we can start to believe in our own strength”.
