16 Conclusions from Man City 3-0 Liverpool: Champions slip to eighth and out of title race
We’re ruling Liverpool out of the Premier League title race and make no apologies for that; they are in eighth place and below every other member of the Big Six after a really poor showing at Manchester City.
City, by contrast, are very much not out of the title race after emphatically capitalising on Arsenal dropping points for the first time in forever to give the pre-interlull Premier League title a more enticing look than could have been the case. Pep Guardiola’s side were excellent in his 1000th game as manager, with one clear and notable standout.
There is some very limited sympathy for Liverpool here over one key incident, but overall they really were alarmingly poor.
1. And then there were two. We had our suspicions before and now it seems more clear-cut than at any other time this season; it’s another City-Arsenal title fight.
It does seem like the idea of another scrap with Mikel Arteta has rejuvenated Pep Guardiola, whose 716th win in his 1000th game as a manager was a big one in every sense. A win that achieved everything he could have asked.
He’s put Arsenal on notice after yesterday’s dropped points. He’s placed Liverpool’s known flaws in ever sharper focus. He’s put his team in position to be the ones to capitalise if anything goes tits skyward for an Arsenal team that really does look like a different beast this year but must still prove they can get over the line.
Guardiola has no such point to prove and will know if he can just keep this side – one that still has an air of the experimental and transitional about it and that in the cold light of day really doesn’t look as good as Arsenal – on the shoulder of the leaders for the next four months then strange things can happen.
2. For Arne Slot and Liverpool, though, a damp and miserable afternoon. They failed to score for the first time in a Premier League game since last September and were palpably and uncomfortably second best in a game that surely leaves Liverpool spectators in the fight to succeed them as Premier League champions.
The first half in particular was just rotten from a side of Liverpool’s status and ambition. The sight of them spending first-half injury-time trying – and ultimately failing – to low-block their way to half-time only one goal down and still just about clinging on in the game really did feel like the act of a team that knows the jig is already up in terms of a title defence.
They go into the November international break down in eighth, trailing behind every other member of the Big Six. At least two of which are genuinely stupid.
3. One of the more damning elements of that is that they sit second-bottom of the faintly ludicrous five teams currently on 18 points. That in itself offers an indication of how far off it they are; at least a healthy goal difference might point to a team doing things right some of the time. As it is they’ve scored fewer goals than Manchester United and – truly absurd, this – conceded seven more than Tottenham.
The brutal truth for Liverpool is that it really does look like the two teams who served up such a daft circus of a game the day before are now their more natural rivals in pursuit of the minor places this season.
4. Here, the die was cast early. Man City started fast and almost never let up. Jeremy Doku, who would go on to complete surely his best game for City and collect among the more straightforward man-of-the-match awards we can recall, almost played Phil Foden in during the early skirmishes.
Doku then jinked into the Liverpool penalty area and won a VAR-awarded penalty after being felled by Giorgi Mamardashvili’s knee.
It was the right decision. The contact wasn’t massive, but it was enough. Without that contact unsettling Doku’s balance, his next touch would have been a shot on a goal guarded only by defenders. A penalty felt a reasonable outcome.
Liverpool may have a grumble or two, but as with most such grumbles today, would be better served applying some introspection. Conor Bradley – perhaps the only Liverpool player in the first half who deserves to escape criticism given the test he faced from Doku and alacrity with which he approached it – appeared to have the situation under control until Ibrahima Konate waded in unnecessarily to confuse matters. He was more hindrance than help.
5. And that was a theme throughout a first half where City rushed Liverpool and harried them into errors all too often. At one point around the 17-minute mark, Konate had had 24 touches. More than any other player on the pitch. This felt suspiciously like a deliberate City tactic. ‘Keep letting him have the ball, everybody; he’s about to do something stupid.’
City did not have him confused with a character in a fictional show.
6. Liverpool would escape with only a warning on this occasion, though. Erling Haaland’s penalty was neither strong enough nor accurate enough. Once Mamardashvili guessed right he was always in with a good chance of making amends, redeeming himself, or whatever else you want to call it. On another day, it really could have been a huge moment in the early stages of his Liverpool career.
Here it would merely delay the inevitable and become a footnote about just how determined City are not to score their goals from set-pieces.
7. One quirk of the first half, given how one-sided it was and how entirely representative 2-0 felt of the proceedings, both City’s goals – and their own clean sheet – had an air of fortune about them. But while Liverpool could make a case for simply not getting the run of the ball in those big moments, they also simply didn’t help themselves. They made mistakes that invited misfortune in, and misfortune rarely declines an invite.
The first goal was a curiosity; at the same time both a move from one end of the pitch to the other involving 20-plus passes and every one of City’s outfield players yet also in the end just alarmingly and tellingly simple. An unpressured cross and a (slightly fortuitous) header.
It was lovely football to patiently create the opening, but just avoidable in so many way for Liverpool. Cutting out the chance for misfortune to visit is so much better as a plan than hoping it doesn’t arrive.
8. Virgil van Dijk makes a significant error of judgement just before the ball arrives at Matheus Nunes’ feet out on the right. As Liverpool are setting up in decent defensive shape, he’s at left-back and Andy Robertson is filling in inside at centre-back. They’d have been better sticking with that, which Robertson clearly indicates to his skipper.
But Van Dijk insists on swapping positions back at the least opportune moment. Robertson doesn’t have time to get out and pressure the cross, leaving Florian Wirtz as Nunes’ nominal foe, and Van Dijk doesn’t have time to get back into a position to affect what comes next anyway.
Yes, the deflection off Konate onto Haaland’s head that sends the ball looping into the net and offering a helping hand to the one striker in perhaps all of world football least in need of it is unfortunate. But how Liverpool allowed it to materialise was so disappointing.
9. And there’s something similar to be said about the second goal. Yes, the deflection off Van Dijk that does for Mamardashvili can be considered unfortunate. But did Liverpool need to be sat so deep, did they need to be so unwilling or unable to close down Nico Gonzalez and allow such a free shot on goal?
With both those goals it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that Liverpool had created their own bad luck. They practically invited it in.
10. Where we do have far more sympathy for Liverpool is in the disallowed equaliser in between City’s first-half goals. It’s easy to say City would have gone on to win regardless and it does still feel like that would’ve been the probable outcome. But equally one should never doubt the sheer p*ss-boiling, game-changing power of the undeserved equaliser. And this would have been an all-time undeserved equaliser.
The difference between Liverpool going in at half-time 2-0 down, soaking wet and forlorn or 1-1 and somehow right back in it was a decision we really struggle to accept. The principle is sound. Obviously you can’t just be standing offside in front of the goalkeeper and putting him off. There’s nothing complicated about why the goal was disallowed; we generally agree with these kind of decisions because you don’t have to do much to interfere with a keeper’s sightlines, space or decision-making. And it does seem like by the letter of the law it was the correct decision given the clear movement Robertson made.
But on this specific occasion that doesn’t mean we have to like it. For what it’s worth, our two cents is that by the time Robertson’s position becomes an offside one – i.e. at the point Van Dijk heads the ball – he is neither in Donnarumma’s eyeline nor impeding his physical ability to make the save. Robertson is undoubtedly in the keeper’s way as the corner comes in, but that’s of no consequence as, obviously, at that time he is not offside.
Liverpool were rotten today and will have to suck it up and go away to lick their wounds, but in this one particular moment at a particularly crucial time, they do have a bit of a point.
11. Liverpool were better in the second half, but we’re firmly in the territory here of declaring the bread the better element of a dogsh*t sandwich.
At no point did it ever really feel like a comeback was on. Never did Liverpool get you thinking they might concoct a madness. Never did Liverpool themselves look like they believed in the possibility.
12. That in itself is quite something given we really are only a few short weeks removed from a time when Liverpool’s ability to pluck a result out of the ether no matter what the circumstances was propelling them to a five-game winning run and five-point lead atop the table.
It does show how quickly things can change and why caution is perhaps needed in so entirely writing them off.
But at the same time, it feels more like the fact the runaway champions went and spent half-a-billion pounds and won their first five games of the season only to still find themselves out of the title race six games later is something that needs studied.
And the bad news for Liverpool is that it’s now the international break, so study it we and everyone else shall, in painful, minute detail.
13. The end when it came was fitting, the game’s best player scoring the game’s best goal to end even the theoretical and hypothetical idea of any Liverpool comeback.
Doku is such a fascinating piece of the Man City puzzle this season, a player given rare licence in a Guardiola team to go pretty much where he pleases and to do pretty much as he pleases for as long as the outcomes justify the long leash.
He was wonderful to watch today, and had Bradley performed at something close to the average level of his team-mates we shudder to think how much worse things could actually have been for Liverpool.
But there was nothing to be done by anyone to stop his performance getting the goal it deserved as he cut in from the left and curled a beauty beyond Mamardashvili with his right foot. It was pleasing to see a game that felt so decisively City’s actually get an uncomplicatedly fitting goal to rubberstamp it after the slightly chaotic and pinball nature of the first-half goals.
14. What was less pleasing was the sight of what is fast becoming one of our main pet peeves of the season, which is lovely goals having their overall aesthetic quality ever so slightly compromised by whacking against the camera or microphone or whatever it is behind the goal rather than nestling satisfyingly in the net as they and we deserve.
Is it the most infuriatingly Modern Football thing about the game in 2025? Not for us to say, but yes. Yes it is. It’s definitely worse than the fact there are a few long throws around, anyway.
15. A quick insight here for you into how our mind works. When we saw the teamsheet and two goalkeepers wearing number 25 for a game between Man City and Liverpool, we were immediately sent wondering whether Pepe Reina and Joe Hart had ever played each other in this fixture while both wearing 25. We are delighted to report they did, and firmly believe this to be the most important takeaway from the day’s events. Title race, schmitle race.
The second most important takeaway was the almost equally delightful discovery that this fixture has now featured six different goalkeepers in its last three renewals. Mamardashvili-Donnarumma, Alisson-Ederson and Coimhin Kelleher-Stefan Ortega.
That’s the good stuff.
16. To end on a vaguely terrifying note, this result means almost everything we whimsically asked for in our last of five things we needed to happen to get us through the international break has in fact happened.
Jude Bellingham was indeed picked, City did indeed beat Liverpool heavily, Arsenal dropped points, Leeds were well beaten in a six-pointer and we’re counting the Spurs-United game as essentially a defeat for both, so that counts as well.
We really should consider using this power for good instead of banter.
