Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

Liverpool

Four-word Pep Guardiola confession could be Jürgen Klopp boost as Liverpool attention switches

Liverpool is not the only English team that has crashed out of European competition this week. Man City and Arsenal winning would have been good but it wasn’t to be.

 

Liverpool fans rarely cheer on the other English sides in European competitions, but there was a sense of disappointment this week at the defeats for Manchester City and Arsenal against Real Madrid and Bayern Munich respectively.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

 

Had the Premier League duo progressed, they would have met one another in the last four of the competition. And as Liverpool knows well, playing in a Champions League semi-final — against anyone, let alone a title rival — is usually a physically and mentally draining ordeal.

It would undoubtedly have been a boost for the Reds’ chance of coming out on top in the Premier League had the two teams that it is competing against, but it wasn’t to be. All hope, however, is not lost.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Manchester City lost on penalties against Real Madrid, meaning it had an extra half an hour to play. And Pep Guardiola’s two key men, Kevin De Bruyne (coming off after 112 minutes) and Erling Haaland (replaced on 91 minutes), were simply too exhausted to continue.

“They asked me to go out,” Guardiola said on his decision to substitute De Bruyne and Haaland. He added, bluntly: “They could not continue.”

Recently, Rodri asked if he could sit out the game with Luton Town in the Premier League because of fatigue. And while Manchester City has not suffered with injuries to anywhere near the extent that Liverpool has this season, Guardiola does like to work with a smaller squad. The Etihad side does not have the depth that many assume it does.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

 

This weekend, it will be interesting to see who makes Guardiola’s starting line-up for the FA Cup semi-final against Chelsea. Just three days after a grueling two hours plus penalties against Real Madrid, Manchester City must take to the field at Wembley.

 

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

As Liverpool found in 2022, competing on all fronts is near-impossible to maintain. The after-effect of that long season was a campaign of extreme difficulty in comparison, and by the end, the physical exertion begins to catch up on you.

So while Manchester City has the lead in the Premier League title race, perhaps there is a glimmer of hope. Matches against Brighton, Nottingham Forest, Wolves, Fulham, Spurs and West Ham might not look the hardest run-in on paper, but with tired bodies and minds, plus the pressure of being in the lead without players like Riyad Mahrez and İlkay Gündoğan, who have been there and done it before, perfection will not be straightforward.

That is not to say that it will be for Liverpool either, of course, with games against Fulham, Everton, West Ham, Spurs, Aston Villa and Wolves remaining, and it remains the case even after the 1-0 win over Atalanta that the Reds must improve their form to even have a chance. But Manchester City has had a lot of matches to get through, and even now it is out of the Champions League, all hope is not lost.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

We are very much inside the final run-in as Liverpool competes for the Premier League title, and it is not just Manchester City that the Reds must better, but Arsenal too. Win six out of six, though, as attention switches exclusively to that rather than trying to book a place in Dublin, and the signs are there that Jürgen Klopp’s side might just have enough.

Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Posts

NFL

‎ The New England Patriots are gearing up for a crucial offseason, with the combine and free agency on the horizon. In this article,...

NFL

It has been a couple of weeks since the Cleveland Browns ended their season with a 3-14 record. The best thing the Browns had...

NFL

In this new development, Maye is facing criticism for not attending Mike Vrabel’s introductory press conference as the new head coach of the New...

NFL

The New England Patriots finished the 2024 season with a 4-13 record, giving them one of the worst records in the NFL and putting...

Advertisement