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The test for Liverpool against Manchester City on Sunday is not of their title credentials. That ship has sailed. Instead it is of how far Arne Slot’s side have truly progressed since their title defence was holed.
Slot feels Liverpool’s displays have warranted defeat only occasionally this season – late lapses, set-piece failures and wasted chances have been more common explanations than the overall performance – and the 3-0 reverse at the Etihad Stadium in November was certainly one of them. The controversy over Virgil van Dijk’s disallowed header at 1-0 still lingers for the Dutchman but does not prevent him holding his hands up.
“In the first half we were outplayed for large parts,” he reiterated this week. “We have shown we are able to compete with any team except for large parts of the first half against City. But it also helped [them] that the goal was disallowed for the wrong reasons in my opinion and they got a penalty. But they were the better team. We want to show a different side of us [on Sunday].”
That defeat, in the 1,000th match of Pep Guardiola’s managerial career, was Liverpool’s seventh in the sequence of nine losses in 12 games that derailed their league campaign and undermined support for Slot. As the response to the subsequent 13-game unbeaten run and defeat at Bournemouth showed – misgivings accompanying almost every performance before erupting after another set-piece calamity on the south coast – neither team nor coach has fully recovered. Belatedly, however, there are at least signs of a recovery being under way.
Liverpool have heeded Slot’s call for improvement in both boxes in their past two outings; the 6-0 rout of Qarabag that secured a place in the last-16 of the Champions League and the ultimately convincing 4-1 comeback against Newcastle last weekend.
The team’s pressing game and work rate were superior, there were fewer chances conceded, and the form of summer signings Hugo Ekitiké, Florian Wirtz and Milos Kerkez continued an upwards trajectory. Repeating the levels in the Premier League three days after a Champions League fixture, having been unable to build on victory over Real Madrid against City in November, brought further encouragement for Slot. Hence why he considers the return meeting with City an accurate gauge of Liverpool’s recent development.
“In that game [against City] it was obvious where we struggled,” said Slot, who saw Cody Gakpo and Mohamed Salah miss clearcut chances in the second half at the Etihad Stadium. “I prefer to keep that to myself because, as you know, I always prefer to protect my players. They had the ball much more than we wanted them to, we struggled to bring the ball out from the back, they didn’t even create that many chances, but it was 2-0 at half-time and they had a penalty that they missed.
“We couldn’t press them and I was very curious to see that. In that time I was not happy with how much intensity we had in our pressing as a team. For me that is the biggest difference between this season and last season. Last season our pressing was much better than it was at the start of this season, but I do see a good development in that.
“And I see our players are able to run more, press more and press better, and combine that with offensive quality. That is why it will be interesting to see, against probably the best or one of the best teams in ball possession, if we have that progression in our work rate off the ball.”
Slot highlighted Wirtz’s work off the ball as the biggest factor in his improvement. After a difficult start to his Premier League career, the 22-year-old Germany international is beginning to exert the influence that Liverpool and City envisaged when the two clubs moved for him last summer. Wirtz and Ekitiké shared the pitch for 56 minutes in that City defeat but Sunday might be the first time Guardiola’s team have experienced the devastating understanding between the pair.
Liverpool have left themselves little margin for error in the race for a top-four finish and need to rebuild momentum, form and confidence in a campaign that could yet be decorated by glory in the Champions League and FA Cup. Their 200th meeting in all competitions with City, who have won only once at Anfield under Guardiola and that behind closed doors, could have implications for the remainder of the season, even though it lacks the title consequences of previous episodes.
“I think we are a better team [than City] and we improved quite a lot from that [3-0] game,” Alexis Mac Allister confidently declared this week. “But now we need to show it.”
