Ahead of Sunday's huge encounter between Liverpool and Manchester City, football writer Ben Bloom looks at whether a defeat would end the champions' title hopes.
The facts will likely prompt eyerolls from Manchester City supporters growing increasingly weary of hearing them, but they make for striking reading.
Ahead of their trip to league leaders Liverpool on Sunday, reigning Premier League champions Man City have not won any of their last six matches in all competitions.
They are without a point in their last three league matches, having suffered their widest-margin defeat for more than 20 years against a Tottenham Hotspur side who had given Ipswich Town their first win of the season just before the international break.
That 4-0 loss to Spurs ended City’s 52-match unbeaten run at the Etihad Stadium.
Three days later, Pep Guardiola then watched his team throw away a 3-0 lead in the UEFA Champions League against Feyenoord, who scored three goals in the final 15 minutes to salvage a draw.
It has been a wretched period for English football’s most dominant club over the past decade; the type of barren run that Guardiola has never before experienced in his glittering managerial career.
“It will be a tough season for us and we have to accept it,” he admitted after that 3-3 draw against Feyenoord.
“We lost a lot of games lately, we are fragile and of course we needed a victory.”
The toughest possible test
Guardiola’s team could not face a more difficult task than the one awaiting them on Sunday as they desperately seek a morale-boosting win to invigorate their season.
City have won just one of their past 21 Premier League away matches against Liverpool (in February 2021) and have not been victorious at Anfield with fans in attendance since 2003.
On recent evidence, this is also one of the best Liverpool teams they have faced.
Under new head coach Arne Slot, Sunday’s hosts have begun the season in the type of ultra-dominant fashion that Liverpool have bettered just once before in the Premier League era, when dropping an astonishing two points only from their first 27 games on the way to their 2019/20 title win.
Slot’s side have won 10 of their opening 12 league matches this campaign, and have a flawless record of victories in domestic and European cup competitions.
Their 2-0 win over 15-time European champions Real Madrid on Wednesday was a fifth successive UEFA Champions League triumph, conceding just one goal in the process.
They have an eight-point advantage over Man City at the top of the Premier League and also sit at the summit of the UEFA Champions League.
| Position Pos | Club | Played Pl | GD | Points Pts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 |
Liverpool
LIV
|
12 | +16 | 31 |
| 2 |
Man City
MCI
|
12 | +5 | 23 |
| 3 |
Chelsea
CHE
|
12 | +9 | 22 |
| 4 |
Arsenal
ARS
|
12 | +9 | 22 |
It would be hard to argue that Slot’s team are anything other than the strongest team in Europe at the moment. It is no wonder City midfielder Ilkay Gundogan describes playing at Anfield as “the toughest possible test” right now.
For a club that have won six of the past seven Premier League titles under Guardiola, going into any domestic match as underdogs is unfamiliar territory.
Not that Slot agrees with the theory that this is a good time to welcome Man City to Anfield.
“I don’t think anyone in the last eight or nine years has said that City at home or away is easy,” said the Liverpool head coach on Thursday in his pre-match press conference.
“The word never comes into my mind. Not at all. Everyone is looking at the result but if you analyse them they are still a very, very good team.
“One of the reasons I think Guardiola is one of the best managers in the world is because he always comes up with solutions to his problems. We all know he will come up with a solution, but hopefully just after Sunday.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he comes up with another brilliant idea that no one has even thought about before.”
Would defeat dash City’s title hopes?
If both teams’ respective form continues at Anfield on Sunday, another loss for City would put them 11 points behind Liverpool. It would be a huge deficit to overcome, even at this relatively early stage of the season.
On only three occasions have a team come from more than 10 points behind to win a Premier League title: Manchester United in 1992/93 (12 points), Man Utd in 1995/96 (12 points) and Arsenal in 1997/98 (13 points).
Recent history does provide some hope – and evidence of late-season surges – for City, with six of their eight title wins coming after clawing back deficits of eight points or more.
But never have they fought back from a margin as wide as 11.
Asked if Sunday’s match was a must-win game, Gundogan said: “To stay in the title race probably yes, because 11 points would be a huge gap.
“It’s still early in the season. There are still a lot of games to play and a lot of things can happen, not just on our side but at every other team. But obviously we have to look at ourselves and try to do the things we can do better, as quickly as possible.”
Following the Spurs defeat, Guardiola was also asked if an 11-point deficit would be too much to overhaul.
“Yeah,” he replied. “In terms of Liverpool winning, winning, winning, it’s true.”
After more time to digest that galling defeat, and when asked again about title aspirations during Friday's press conference, he struck a marginally less fatalistic note.
“In the situation we have it isn’t realistic to think about big targets,” he said.
“Always I think about it in March or April. Where we are now, it doesn’t matter what happens on Sunday. It’ll be difficult if we don’t take a result but there are lots of games to play.”
He added: “Succeeding is how many times you stand up when you fall. The result doesn’t change anything, but in three days after Liverpool we will play against Nottingham Forest and we have to prove it.
“We still need 11 or 12 games winning in a row to prove we are stable.”
The end of an era?
While results over the past few weeks have taken things to an extreme, it is not unusual for City to start slowly in recent Premier League seasons.
Guardiola has perfected the art of his teams peaking in the mid-to-late season.
Only last year, City went through a run of six Premier League matches in November and December where their only victory was a 2-1 comeback win over Luton Town.
Even if they slip to defeat at Anfield (and also lose their following match), City could still exceed the 37-point tally they had at the halfway stage of last season’s title triumph.
But Liverpool look more formidable rivals than Arsenal were last campaign, and the aura that Guardiola’s side have held over recent years appears to have faded; no longer do opposition teams fear them in the same way.
All great dynasties come to an end at some point. A piece in The Times this week detailed what happens when footballing empires collapse, analysing the likes of Liverpool in 1991, Man Utd in 2013 and Chelsea in 2015.
Whether this is the start of something similar at City or merely a blip remains to be seen, but Guardiola has been forced to defend the age of a squad that some suggest is in need of rejuvenation.
Nine of City’s players are over 30 (Mateo Kovacic, Bernardo Silva, John Stones, Ederson, Stefan Ortega, Kevin De Bruyne, Gundogan, Kyle Walker and Scott Carson). Three more are due to reach that landmark next year.
“There are players who are 30 and more than 30 who perform incredibly well,” Guardiola said earlier this week. “There are players who are 23 who perform not good. I don’t see the age. All teams have players with certain ages.
“The analysis from my point of view right now shows that we are not getting results is not because we have players [older than 30], because a few weeks ago they were the same age and we won the Premier League, reached the FA Cup final and were eliminated by Real Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League.”
How can Guardiola turn things around?
It is the big question with no simple solution.
As Walker said after the Spurs defeat: “If we knew what we were doing wrong, we’d be giving you the answers out there and winning games.”
The most obvious missing piece of the puzzle is the absence of Ballon d’Or winner Rodri, who has been out since undergoing surgery on knee ligament damage in September.
Rodri has long been the beating heart of City’s side since joining the club in 2019, with results dropping markedly in any game he is unable to play.
The nearest thing they have to a replacement, Kovacic, is also expected to be out for a number of weeks with an injury picked up while on international duty with Croatia.
Man City are expected to undertake a rare delve into the January transfer market as they seek to locate a similar central midfielder, but Guardiola has seven more Premier League games before the window even opens.
He has also experienced unavailability in the core of his defence, with Stones and Ruben Dias missing periods through injury and lack of match fitness – problems that have additionally affected De Bruyne and Jack Grealish.
Once Dias returns, Guardiola might be tempted to try Stones in the Rodri role to provide more physicality and presence in central midfield.
At the other end of the pitch, the over-reliance on Erling Haaland has been extreme, with the Norwegian – despite underperforming on his Expected Goals (xG) in recent weeks – scoring 12 of the team’s 22 league goals.
No other City player has managed more than three.
“What should I change?” asked Guardiola earlier this week.
“If I should change in my first season [at City] maybe we would not win six Premier Leagues in seven years. I am not going to change. The success we have had, we are big believers in the process and the fundamentals we have to do.
“What we have to believe is the players who are injured come back to their best form, the players who have played a lot of minutes because of the injuries get some rest.
“[We need] one good result which can change our mind. Right now this shall pass. Nothing is eternal.”
Walker agreed that one win is all it takes to “get our mojo back”, adding: “Sometimes in football you need a little bit of luck.”
City will be hoping it arrives at Anfield.
