Man City’s flaws are exposed – and Liverpool could humiliate them

Pep Guardiola has endured some torturous visits to Anfield in his time, but over Sunday’s game between Liverpool and Manchester City looms the very real prospect of humiliation.

In the past few weeks, Guardiola has lost five consecutive games for the first time as manager, suffered his joint-heaviest defeat and seen his team throw away a three-goal lead in the Champions League.

By contrast, Liverpool have won 17 of 19 matches in all competitions under new head coach Arne Slot, vanquished the champions of Germany and Spain by an aggregate of 6-0 and can pull 11 points clear of City with victory.

In the absence of Rodri and Ruben Dias, City are brittle and ageing midfielders running back towards their own goal as if pulling a caravan has become a regular sight.

Liverpool look primed to open up these fresh wounds, and Guardiola urgently needs to find a solution.

The numbers that tell the story of City’s vulnerability

Ever since Guardiola’s coaching career began, the threat of the counter-attack has haunted his worst footballing nightmares. A highly technical, possession-hungry style comes with a high-wire act.

Guardiola wants to dominate the ball and pin opponents in their half. He needs players in proximity deep in opposition territory to combine with short passes and a defence that squeezes high to keep the team compact. This involves a bargain: in return for conceding a small quantity of chances, there is an acceptance those few chances might be of high quality.

City have mitigated this risk in several ways. They have a slow, deliberate passing style that values accuracy and minimises turnovers. They counter-press, and often counter-foul, aggressively to halt dangerous breaks at source.

Since Erling Haaland joined City in 2022, changing the team’s balance as a true centre-forward, defensive full-backs such as Nathan Ake, Manuel Akanji, Kyle Walker and Josko Gvardiol have come to the fore as crucial stabilisers.

Rodri, out for the rest of this season with a serious knee injury, has been the most important insurance policy of all. Without their most influential player, the quality of chances City are conceding has ballooned. As City’s results make plain, it is no longer a risk that can be tolerated as a function of their general approach.

So far this Premier League season, the majority of which has been without Rodri, City’s non-penalty shots conceded have an average expected goals value of 0.16. This is the highest in the division, significantly more than Arsenal’s 0.07 non-penalty expected goals per shot conceded and Liverpool’s 0.09.

While City tend to rank highly in this metric, it is also the highest shot quality they have conceded in any Premier League campaign under Guardiola.

For the first time under Guardiola, City are facing more of what Opta defines as “big chances” than they are creating. In fact, City have already faced more big chances this season than they did in the entirety of 2017-18, when they won the title with 100 points. Since Rodri sustained his knee injury in September’s draw with Arsenal, City have faced more big chances than any club in the top flight.

Rodri’s injury has highlighted City’s puzzlingly poor midfield recruitment, with money wasted on Kalvin Phillips and Matheus Nunes. Mateo Kovacic is steady and a fine ball-player, but did little to address what has become a serious athletic deficit in this key area of the pitch. City are relying on Kovacic, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne – all the wrong side of 30 – to press and then recover into space once that pressure is breached.

City are facing an average of 1.42 fast breaks per game in the Premier League this season. During their title-winning seasons between 2017 and 2019, they were barely facing one every five Premier League games. City are conceding 1.17 shots from fast breaks per game. At their best, this was just 0.16 shots from fast breaks per game. It is worth noting that these numbers have been trending upwards since 2022.

How Liverpool can prey on City’s weaknesses

Under Arne Slot, Liverpool have placed greater emphasis on building play from deep. Goalkeeper Caoimhin Kelleher, Alisson Becker’s deputy, is excellent with his feet, while Liverpool have two magnificent long-range passers at the base of their team in Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk.

With City’s midfield floundering when they are required to defend large distances, Liverpool could attempt to make the pitch as big as possible by moving the ball down in their own defensive third. The purpose of short passes in this area is not necessarily to play through the whole pitch, but to bait the opposition into pressing before sending a more direct ball forward.

It would pose City a dilemma: do they jump into a man-for-man pressing shape and leave their defenders one-on-one with Liverpool’s forwards, or keep an extra player back to deal with that threat. The latter strategy would leave Liverpool with a spare player to play out and establish control.

Conceding goals from early, faded passes across a retreating defence has also been a theme of City’s season. In Andy Robertson and especially Alexander-Arnold, Liverpool have two full-backs adept at whipping deliveries across the face of the penalty area.

In the below example at Wolves, City’s left winger Jeremy Doku has pressed Wolves’ right-sided centre-back, leaving space for a clever pass out to wing-back Nelson Semedo. His cross was quite brilliant, evading John Stones and Dias for Jorgen Strand Larsen to finish. If Alexander-Arnold has the time and space, this is precisely the type of pass from which Liverpool can profit.

(Start at 0:05)

Timo Werner scored from a similar move in City’s Carabao Cup defeat by Tottenham Hotspur. Throughout the move below, City’s pressers were always a yard or too far off their Spurs man. When the ball is played down the line to Brennan Johnson, Dejan Kulusevski on his inside runs off the back of Gundogan into space. Just like Semedo, he provides an assist with a ball across City’s defence. The move starts on the right and finishes on the left.

Bournemouth’s second goal against City was the same move but in reverse. Antoine Semenyo drives away from Bernardo, Milos Kerkez wins the sprint against Walker, and Gvardiol is too far forward to cover behind Ake. Evanilson scores to put the game beyond City.

(Start at 1:14)

Another avenue for Liverpool to explore is late runs from midfield, with Curtis Jones expected to keep his place as Liverpool’s third midfielder instead of Dominik Szoboszlai. It was Jones’s late run into the box that provided Liverpool’s winner against Chelsea, and City do not have a fit and available midfielder capable of tracking his movement. Jones’s pass map against Real Madrid shows Slot affords him the freedom to drift to whichever side of the pitch the ball is on.

James Maddison’s runs from midfield damaged City last weekend, exploiting the chasm between Stones and Walker. Against Real Madrid, Slot even allowed Conor Bradley to make deep runs into the box, and the right-back almost scored with a header from a dinked Alexis Mac Allister cross. If City’s full-backs are attracted to Luis Diaz and Mohamed Salah wide, expect to see these late bursts down the seams of space between the blue shirts.

Do City have any fixes?

One of football’s most important defensive principles is to make the pitch as small as possible when you do not have possession. This applies to a Jurgen Klopp team pressing high, a Unai Emery side in a half-court press or a Tony Pulis team sitting deep. They are all following the same principle, but picking their poison regarding the space they are happy to concede.

Where should City engage Liverpool? A full press deep into Liverpool’s half risks exposing their lack of athleticism in midfield, and offers Liverpool’s superior runners the chance to attack over long distances. Nor are City built to sit on the edge of their box and absorb pressure.

The most sensible option would appear to be something like a 4-4-2 “mid-block” or half-press, ensuring City’s midfield two have short distances to cover. This strategy would allow Liverpool’s centre-backs to have possession under little pressure, but condense the space between City’s midfield and back four. From there, they can play off Liverpool errors and look to release Phil Foden, De Bruyne or Haaland in transition, with the home side missing key defender Ibrahima Konate.

The potential return of Dias could give Guardiola the option of moving Stones into a defensive-midfield position.

Stones would find this harder than stepping into midfield zones from defence as an extra man, but he is probably the closest analogue to Rodri in City’s squad both technically and physically. City could line up with Walker, Dias, Ake and Gvardiol, and Stones in front. When Liverpool move the ball wide, Stones could drop into the penalty area as a third centre-back to block off those runs from Jones and others.