Harvey Elliott talks Jurgen Klopp, Pep Guardiola, Liverpool and Manchester City ahead of the huge Premier League encounter at Anfield
Harvey Elliott believes Anfield is the perfect destination for Jurgen Klopp to end his Premier League rivalry with Pep Guardiola when Liverpool host Manchester City this afternoon (Sunday).
And the midfielder believes the home crowd could be the difference when the two giants of English football square off in a match that will be pivotal in this season’s title race.
Between Klopp and Guardiola, the two managers have overseen some of the biggest-ever points hauls in English football history with City and the Reds picking up tallies ranging between 92 and 100 points over the last five years.
The pair have scooped 21 major honours combined with the legendary managers at the respective helms but City boss Guardiola will find a new adversary in place at Anfield next season after Klopp walks away from the Reds at the end of the campaign.
Elliott labelled both managers as “world class” but with the Liverpool boss now into the final couple of months of his nine-year stint in the dugout, the 20-year-old believes the supporters will be integral to Sunday’s top-of-the-table clash.
“It’s two world-class managers going head to head,” Elliott said. “But, you know, it’s at our home and the gaffer has the fans behind us. They are going to be right behind us from the first warm-up and there is no better place to have the final clash. You could say that so we just need to make sure we’re all there ready.
“You know, with City, it’s a tough game, we know that, but I don’t think we can big it up more than any other game. We just focus and not over-analyse or think about it too much.
“We just need to go out and play the way we play, play our football with Anfield behind us. It’s a massive help so we just need to go out and do our own thing. We can’t big it up too much. It’s a massive game, of course, but we’re a massive club as well, and we just need to be thinking about ourselves. It is about recovery now and then we start thinking about the weekend.”
Speaking after the 5-1 Europa League win at Sparta Prague on Thursday, Elliott also dismissed the notion that the Reds would be spending much of their pre-match preparation on analysing the strengths of their visitors, insisting they must impose their own game at Anfield in a fixture that could go a long way toward deciding the next Premier League champions.
