Manchester City 4 Liverpool 1: Grealish goes up a gear, Alvarez stars, Klopp needs signings

Second-half goals from Kevin De Bruyne, Ilkay Gundogan and Jack Grealish helped Manchester City come from behind to hammer Liverpool and send an emphatic message to Arsenal in the Premier League title race.

With Erling Haaland ruled out with a groin problem, Mohamed Salah added to the angst at the Etihad Stadium with the opening goal in the 17th minute, but City’s response was magnificent.

Grealish’s brilliance at both ends of the pitch allowed Julian Alvarez to level before the break from close range. And it was game over with eight minutes of the second half gone. De Bruyne gave them the lead after great work from Alvarez and Riyad Mahrez before that duo teed up Gundogan to make it three. Grealish put the seal on things as Liverpool wilted.

The Athletic’s Oliver Kay, Sam Lee and Liam Tharme analysed the action.

Alvarez takes chance to shine in absence of Haaland

“The main thing is to cut off the passing options between the lines,” said Klopp when asked pre-match about needing a different game plan to defend against Alvarez rather than Erling Haaland.

Liverpool managed that for the most part with a compact 4-4-2, but Alvarez showed quality to receive from the back three and play one-touch passes to No 10s De Bruyne and Gundogan. City continued their trademark three-box-three shape, with John Stones in defensive midfield alongside Rodri and Alvarez flanked by Grealish and Riyad Mahrez.

That was essential to access the No 10s as Liverpool’s defensive shape blocked direct passes into them.

Alvarez played a direct role in all three of City’s goals: he scored the equaliser, tapping in Grealish’s cutback from the left.

His first action after half-time was to play a big switch to Mahrez, who found De Bruyne to put City ahead. The third goal encapsulated Alvarez’s game — more of a conventional Guardiola No 9 than Haaland, capable of playing in tight spaces. On the edge of the box against a low block, he came short, played a neat one-two with Stones, then timed his run into the box to receive the cutback, with Gundogan scoring the rebound from Alvarez’s blocked shot.

Liam Tharme

Grealish now looks at home in Guardiola’s team

Seemingly everybody looked at Grealish this time last year and wondered what exactly he could bring to City. Now we have an answer.

The tactical discipline, defensive work rate and ability to attract two or three players never seemed to count as much for anybody else as it did for Guardiola, but it is impossible to ignore Grealish’s good work now.

And never mind the goals and assists that are flowing quite nicely at the moment; when you are racing back to defend a counter-attack from a set piece, you are always going to get the adoration of the football public, particularly in the UK. He did that against Tottenham a couple of months ago, thwarting a break with a textbook sliding tackle, and he got back there to stop Liverpool going 2-0 up with a crucial interception.

Exactly 60 seconds later, he was in exactly the right place to deliver exactly the right pass to Alvarez to tie the game up.

He looks fully at home in this team now and you do not have to dig too deep to justify that point of view.

When he scored the fourth, it was the least he deserved.

Sam Lee

A season defined by defensive errors

It would be easy for Klopp to dismiss this — far more than some of Liverpool’s other defeats this season — as a simple case of being outmanoeuvred by a brilliant team and sure enough there were periods when, with and without the ball, they performed almost exactly as he would have wished.

But there were moments when their defending simply wasn’t good enough. What seemed like little things — Andy Robertson being sucked in towards a challenge on De Bruyne in the build-up to City’s first goal, leaving Mahrez in space behind him, or Jordan Henderson losing track of De Bruyne on the halfway line in the build-up to the second — effectively left Liverpool’s whole defence exposed. Trent Alexander-Arnold and Virgil van Dijk were both too casual for the fourth.

That has been the story of their season: individual mistakes compounding a collective malaise, or is it the other way around? For so much of Klopp’s tenure, the enthusiasm and intensity of this Liverpool team has appeared contagious. This season it is errors that have been allowed to spread.

Oliver Kay

City in ominous form — at the right time, again

Three home games in a row, three Poznans. It is the business end of the season, City are clicking and the fans are enjoying themselves.

Look, Arsenal are still top, there is work to do there, and maybe they simply do not let City overtake them.

City, though, look like they are ready to do all they can to fight all the way and that is particularly significant when you consider that just a couple of months ago, Guardiola was saying he did not care what happened, he just wanted his team to look like they cared.

They care alright. There was a rough patch in the New Year, more or less the reason for that points gap to Arsenal, but they are now playing their best football of the season by far.

Sure, the last three games — RB Leipzig, Burnley, Liverpool — have all been much more open, transitional affairs than City’s usual games, so how they translate this energy to games when the opposition digs in deep and restricts the spaces is something of an unknown right now, but how they have torn their opponents apart cannot be underestimated.

Maybe Arsenal go all the way on their own, but City won’t make it easy for them.

Sam Lee

Liverpool don’t lose leads often

Even in a season where Liverpool have consistently collapsed, the one part of their identity that had still been present at kick-off was being able to see out wins.

That record dissipated in 30 second-half minutes as Liverpool lost a Premier League game they scored first in for the first time since February 2021, away to Leicester City.

Klopp’s side had won 33 of their last 36 games when taking the lead, a record stretching back to the start of August 2021, which leaves Brentford (scored first in 24 games, won 19, drawn five, lost none) as the only unbeaten team from winning positions over the past two seasons.

By 70 minutes, Liverpool had more offsides (five) than shots (four). Their sit-back-and-counter approach was ineffective and they largely timed and executed passes badly. They were too passive and City were too incisive.

The game might have gone differently if Salah had made more of the counter-attack from a City corner with the game at 1-0, but Grealish recovered, which sums up Liverpool’s season, likely to be their worst with Klopp in charge (excluding 2015-16 as he joined midway through).

Liam Tharme

Klopp needs backing this summer — their squad looks stale

During the second half of last season, as these two teams fought right down to the wire in the Premier League title race, it was possible to argue Liverpool had the stronger squad. City were operating with a core of 17 outfield players, Liverpool with 22, which no doubt helped their pursuit of success on four fronts.

Now? Hardly. In numerical terms, Liverpool might look stronger, but their squad depth has become an illusion. How many of their 11 midfielders does Klopp trust in a game of this magnitude in 2023?

Klopp’s quadruple substitution at 3-1 down — Kostas Tsimikas, Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain, Roberto Firmino and Darwin Nunez for Robertson, Harvey Elliott, Diogo Jota and Salah — did not look like the act of a manager who believed he had the resources to claw back control of the game. James Milner’s introduction for the closing stages was about damage limitation.

In contrast, City, even with Phil Foden and Haaland out, could keep Kyle Walker and Aymeric Laporte on the bench throughout and restrict Bernardo Silva to a late cameo. There is still a slight doubt about City’s depth in certain positions, but they have invested in a way that has kept their squad fresh as well as keeping the quality level high.

Liverpool have addressed certain positions over the last few transfer windows, but they did not do enough to rebuild from a position of strength and now their squad looks stale. They have a big and challenging summer ahead.

Oliver Kay

(Top photo: Manchester City FC/Manchester City FC via Getty Images)