How “Manchester City” beat “Liverpool” and returned to the golden race
In the match, which indirectly could be called gold, Guardiola and Klopp again came face to face to give us the best football. After the zeros on the scoreboard in the first match, it is unlikely that everyone waited for some “5: 3” in their next confrontation, especially when so much was at stake. The coaches again provided us with a whole range of tactical moves and pans and the most furious football. All this we rush to tell you. Let’s take a look at all the details of this confrontation.
Statistics match “Manchester City” – “Liverpool” (2: 1)
Strokes (on target): 9 (4) -> 7 (5)
Percentage of possession: 49.5 <- 50.5
Total broadcasts: 577 79
Key gears: 6 -> 4
Corner: 2 -> 1
Attempts to dribble (successfully): 20 (7) -> 14 (10)
Won the top. Martial Arts: 19 -> 9
Selections: 14 10
xG: 1.18 <- 1.38
Whoscored match player: Sterling – 8.0
Stated arrangements
How “Manchester City” beat “Liverpool” and returned to the golden race
The teams and their configurations were as close as possible to those we saw in the first match of these teams. ManCity had the same scheme, somewhere between 4-3-3 and 4-2-3-1, in which this time we saw three new players: instead of Mendy, Walker and Marez, Kompani, Danilo and Sanya. B. Silva, who again played a little below his Spanish namesake, occasionally making a pair of opornikov with Fernandinho.
Liverpool had the same 4-3-3, which smoothly flowed into the diamond with Firmino in the role of “ten”, and there was only one change in the composition: Trent Alexander-Arnold came to the right instead of Gomez. It is difficult to single out something else in the starting formations, since the teams were as familiar as possible to the opposing coaches and all of us. The most interesting thing that could be distinguished was a trip to Lyaport for the position of a left-back, where Pep again showed up traditional personnel problems.
From the first minutes began the most rational football
Top trainers are top trainers, because they make the most useful decisions for each individual opponent. Both teams tried first of all not to be mistaken, especially “Liverpool”, who would be perfectly acceptable to play for the same zeros that were in the first match, and maintain a comfortable advantage. We almost did not see the firm crushing pressure that Klopp can do in the first 20 minutes and which we saw in the match at “Enfield. There were moments of semi-pressing, but mostly the players of Liverpool remained in the minority, and the hosts still continued their attacks.
Apart from certain points, “Liverpool” very consistently continued to defend itself with restraint in 4-3-3, compactly building the first and second lines of welcoming players. At the same time, the City players had enough time and space to calmly roll the ball and go out from their half of the field.
“Manchester City” as the owners tried to seize the advantage, but also did it very carefully, putting as much effort and risk as Pep allowed. Basically, the guests always had a quantitative advantage in their half and options for further advancing the ball. The City players lined up compactly 4-1-3-2 / 4-1-4-1, where Fernandinho played the role of a safety anchor, and everyone who was above him blocked the possible moves in the center of the field with a narrow line.
The difficulties of “Liverpool”
The beauty of such a game, “City” was that, while remaining cautious and calm, they put enough effort and mind to create problems for Liverpool, which was sometimes hard to get out of their half. More confident home ownership of the ball led to the fact that the guests did not have a very large abundance of options for entering the other half. Talent Henderson and Milner (and Waynalduma, probably) was not enough to regularly at the expense of individual efforts to ruin the line of welcoming players of Manchester City.
The difficulty of the situation in which Liverpool found itself can be assessed from this frame. Henderson, who in theory should play the role of a point guard, has enough time and space to find an option to move the ball forward. But usually, Hendo’s talent against an opponent of this level was only enough to move the ball back to one of the defenders, and then there was already a long pass ahead / pass to Alisson and the same pass from him. Such exchanges did not exactly benefit the Klopp team. I do not even want to once again talk about the prospects of the trio of Liverpool attackers in the power struggle against four defenders with an average height of 188 cm. Here I would also like to note Fernandinho’s usual domination over his opponents in the center of the field.