Liverpool vs Manchester City: How far is Jurgen Klopp inside Pep Guardiola’s head?

Guardiola is not naturally a compromiser but against Klopp his convictions buckled

Pep Guardiola is not a compromiser and the story of his time in England has been one of him sticking to his beliefs with religious conviction. He always trusted that he would be vindicated and when his Manchester City team recorded 100 points last season, he was.

But there was one moment last season when even Guardiola’s convictions buckled. When he gave up on what had made City the best team in the country. And in doing so, he went against himself, and everything that has made him the manager that he is.

That is the effect Jurgen Klopp has on Guardiola, how far he is inside Guardiola’s head. The product of his outstanding record against Guardiola – seven wins to the Catalan’s five – over the years. No other manager even comes close. And the most important of those wins, the one that shapes the lead into Sunday’s game, came on 2 April when City went to Anfield in the first leg of the Champions League quarter-final.

For Guardiola it has always been a point of principle that his teams play their way, and the opponent can adjust. That is the point of high-possession football, that City take the lead and play the game on their own terms. It is why Guardiola always talks of his team being the “protagonists” on the pitch, and why Jose Mourinho’s reactive approach is so anathema to him. The whole point of a game is to make it your own.

Even in the harder games, this is still what Guardiola intends to do, even though playing that way can leave his side exposed on the break. Before City played FC Basel away in the first leg of the last-16 in February this year, Guardiola was asked if he would still insist on trying to impose his game – aggressive, high pressing, 4-3-3, on the opposition. Always. “We are going to try,” Guardiola said. “In every single game since we were together for 18 months, we try to impose our game.”

But not at Anfield on 2 April. That night, Guardiola blinked. Abandoning the 4-3-3 that had been his default system all the way through last season, he switched to a 4-4-2 with a diamond midfield. For most of last season, Guardiola would pick three of David Silva, Kevin de Bruyne, Fernandinho and Ilkay Gundogan in his midfield three. That night, for just the second time, Guardiola picked all four.

Klopp celebrates after Borussia Dortmund defeat Bayern Munich (Getty)

The only other time he had done it had been in the first half of the League Cup final against Arsenal on 24 February, when City looked clogged up and confused as if the players were being asked to go against their instincts. It was only when Fernandinho came off and City switched back to 4-3-3 that they could take the game away from Arsenal again.

And yet when City went to Anfield, Guardiola made the same decision. He had seen how dangerous Liverpool were on the break, how they had shredded City in the 4-3 defeat there earlier in the season. So he decided to play four midfielders instead of three. He wanted more passes, more control, to slow the game down and to block Liverpool off. He did not want them to be able to cut through the channels. And he told the City full-backs Aymeric Laporte and Kyle Walker not to attack too far because of the space they would leave behind them. Bernardo Silva and Raheem Sterling were left on the bench.

The result was a City team sent out at Anfield told to do almost the opposite of what they had spent almost two seasons working on. All that ideology suddenly reversed by the ideologue himself. No wonder City looked so unsure of themselves, so unusually lacking in conviction and belief. All they can do is take their cue from their manager and when he goes back on his principles, what are his players meant to think?

As everyone knows, City were blown away in the first half by a Liverpool team who had so much more confidence and trust in what they were asked to do. They snapped into every tackle, won every loose ball, and they were 3-0 up after 31 minutes – a result that they held onto. By the time Guardiola brought on Sterling for Gundogan and returned to the 4-3-3, it was already too late.

This is a huge test for Guardiola (Getty)

In the team meeting after the game, as shown on ‘All or Nothing’, Guardiola pointed to the fact that City had conceded far fewer shots than they did when they lost 4-3 at Anfield. He accepted that “maybe it is the system” that went wrong for his team. But he was clear: City were “not aggressive enough”, they made it too easy for Mohamed Salah, and that they “have to be aggressive all the time”.

In the second leg, City seemed to have learned their lesson, throwing everything at Liverpool in a 3-3-4 formation that produced a scintillating first half before they eventually ran out of steam and lost that game too.

But the point was clear. This City team only knows one way to play because Guardiola has only ever taught them one way to play. That zeal and conviction is a strength, not a weakness, because it encourages the mastery of a style that saw City break all the records last season. But Guardiola is not unbeatable and no-one is better at beating him than Klopp – first at Borussia Dortmund, now at Liverpool. April showed us that that fact weighs so heavily on Guardiola, and he is so desperate to free himself from it, that he compromised his values in an attempt to do so. The solution this weekend may be in found in those old values again.