Arne Slot’s side put paid to the Gunners’ hopes of catching them with a business-like performance – and in the process completed City’s week from Hell
Well, it was nice while it lasted. The illusion of a title race was brutally shot down as Liverpool brushed Manchester City aside on Sunday and effectively ended Arsenal’s hopes of catching them at the top of the Premier League. Goals from Mohamed Salah and Dominik Szoboszlai secured a 2-0 win that completed City’s week from Hell as the Reds beat their rivals away from home in the Premier League for the first time in a decade, just days after Pep Guardiola’s side had been dumped out of the Champions League by Real Madrid and Kylian Mbappe.
City had bid farewell to the title race themselves when they were beaten by Liverpool at Anfield back in December, but Arsenal still had a shred of hope of toppling the Reds after Aston Villa had held the league leaders to a draw on Wednesday. The Gunners approached the weekend hoping to cut Liverpool’s advantage down to five points with a game in hand by beating lowly West Ham and hoping for a favour from City. But instead, the Gunners fell to a shock home defeat while Arne Slot’s side ended a season-defining weekend by marching 11 points clear at the top of the table as they close in on a record-equalling 20th English title.
City-Liverpool meetings have often been title showdowns in recent years, but pride was the main thing at stake for Guardiola’s side. They managed to leave with some self-respect by taking the game to the league leaders, but once they fell behind to Salah’s 25th league goal of the season, they never looked like getting back in it. And the players they would usually turn to in their hour of need were nowhere to be seen. Erling Haaland was absent from the squad with the knee injury which led to him missing the defeat in Madrid, and Kevin De Bruyne may as well have been missing as he trundled painfully through the game before Guardiola put him out of his misery and took him off.
De Bruyne has so often been City’s talisman in crunch fixtures like this, but with this pitiful display it felt like he was saying goodbye to elite football. And yet Salah – who is just one year younger than the Belgian – is in the prime of his career and looks set to soon lift his second Premier League crown with the Reds.
GOAL breaks down the winners & losers from the Etihad Stadium…
WINNER: Mohamed Salah
Mbappe had played his way into the Ballon d’Or race with his stunning hat-trick against City on Wednesday, but the other main contender for the Golden Ball made sure he had his say in Guardiola’s side’s downfall too. Salah did not cut City to smithereens like the Frenchman did at the Bernabeu. Instead, his influence was more subtle, scoring with a deflected strike and then laying the ball off for Szoboszlai to make it nine goals and four assists in his last eight appearances while scoring in each one. But those plays proved the difference, and took him onto a surreal 41 Premier League goal contributions for the season, becoming the first player to breach the 40-goal contribution mark in two separate campaigns.
Salah hit that milestone in his incredible debut year with Liverpool in 2017-18, but he has aged like a fine wine, saving his best season for what is looking increasingly likely to be his last with the club. The Egyptian being responsible for creating or scoring 1.5 goals per league game would be astonishing enough on its own, but the fact he has done it repeatedly against the top sides makes his feats even more impressive.
Salah has scored nine goals and notched six assists in seven games against the traditional ‘Big Six’ clubs (Man City, Manchester United, Chelsea, Tottenham and Arsenal) while also scoring and creating goals when he has faced Newcastle, Aston Villa and local rivals Everton. As Andy Robertson put it: “He is on a different world right now and playing out of his skin.”
LOSER: Kevin De Bruyne
De Bruyne’s pride must have been hurting from the fact that he was not called upon at the Bernabeu, but perhaps he wished that he had not been thrown to the lions here. The City captain looked lost for his whole time on the pitch, and when Guardiola withdrew him in the 66th minute, it felt like an act of mercy. The reception that De Bruyne got from the home fans when he left the pitch also felt more like a show of gratitude for everything he has given the club rather than a recognition for his performance on the day.
When De Bruyne left the pitch, only Trent Alexander-Arnold had a worse pass completion rate. He did not just give the ball away too often, his passes were atrocious, lacking accuracy and belief. So too was his shooting. At the end of the first half, he sent the ball crashing over and wide, coming closer to hitting the corner flag than the frame of the goal.
His humiliation was complete when he tried desperately to keep the ball in play in the second half, but sent it out for a corner and was cruelly mocked by the Liverpool supporters. De Bruyne was the scourge of the Merseysiders for so long and his brilliance helped City pip them to two titles, as well as seeing off the threat of Arsenal in the last two years. But right now, City are not even in the title conversation while De Bruyne looks like a player on a farewell tour – and it’s not a happy one.
WINNER: Dominik Szoboszlai
Szoboszlai is enjoying a new lease of life in his second season at Anfield after being given a more advanced role by Slot, and this was one of his best displays yet. He was Salah’s perfect partner in crime, on the same wave length as the forward for both goals before also selflessly passing for Curtis Jones to score a third goal that was disallowed for offside.
The Hungarian’s outrageous assist to Salah was described as “out of this world” by a delighted Jamie Carragher for Sky Sports, while his sweeping strike for the second goal managed to completely outfox Ederson even though it had taken no deflection. It was not just the goals though; the midfielder utterly dominated the occasion. He ran rings around Nico Gonzalez, making a mockery of Guardiola’s claim that City’s new singing was a ‘mini Rodri’. He also danced through Phil Foden and made his presence felt with meaty challenges on Savinho and Mateo Kovacic.
How Guardiola must have wished that his side, which used to be built around having multiple world-beating midfielders, could count on a player as influential as Szoboszlai.
LOSER: Full-backs
This was not a day to savour for any player who prides themselves on playing as a full-back. Plenty of genres of the position were represented on Sunday, but all four were given a torrid time.
Rico Lewis was City’s worst offender for the first goal as he failed to track Salah from the corner, but his counterpart on the other flank, Josko Gvardiol, did him a service by easing his sense of embarrassment a few moments later as he made a hash of defending a routine pass down his channel, which in turn let Salah get there before him before he then failed to stop the Egyptian from getting into the box and teeing up Szoboszlai.
Things were not much better for Liverpool when it came to defending down the flanks. Alexander-Arnold could hardly lay a glove on Jeremy Doku, while Robertson was routinely beaten by Savinho. Guardiola remarked: “I don’t know how many times we arrived to the byline. For nine years, that has been the target of my teams.”
Fortunately for the visitors, City could not turn their dominance down the wings into proper scoring opportunities, much less goals.
WINNER: Arne Slot
Slot has only been in the Liverpool job for one season, but he has already done something Jurgen Klopp was incapable of: beating Guardiola’s City at the Etihad in the league. Klopp’s only Premier League victory at this stadium came against Manuel Pellegrini, and while his battles with the Catalan in Manchester were always memorable, they rarely had a satisfying ending.
The way Slot calmly patrolled his technical area was in total contrast to the full-blooded way Klopp went through games like tthis, and the current Liverpool boss had a simple yet clever tactical plan: let City have the ball but make sure his side never let them do what they wan with it.
Liverpool were also ruthlessly efficient, scoring with both of their only shots on goal in the first half. Slot explained: “If you play away against a Pep team, it is almost impossible to have more ball possession than his team has. We knew we had to defend a lot and that’s what we did really well.”
It would have been easy for the Liverpool boss to get carried away with the emotion of doing the double on City and moving 11 points clear at the top of the table, especially as he heard his supporters chant, “We’re gonna win the league”. But he was the picture of calm, effortlessly betting away the question. “The fans can sing whatever they want,” he said. “I think they sing it quite a lot already, but we know as a team how hard we have to work for every single win.”
LOSER: Arsenal
Arsenal had allowed themselves to dream about catching Liverpool after Slot’s side had drawn four of their previous eight league games, with Wednesday’s result at Villa, made possible by Darwin Nunez’s incredible missed sitter, giving them renewed hope. But let’s be honest: the Gunners were only kidding themselves.
The long absence of talisman Bukayo Saka and then the season-ending injury to Kai Havertz was always going to weigh them down in the title race, and they have also become their own worst enemies by getting so many players sent off. Those two factors haunted them against West Ham, as they could only muster two shots on target from their 20 attempts in total while Myles Lewis-Skelly’s red card – Arsenal’s fifth sending off of the season in the league – made their task of coming back from Jarrod Bowen’s goal impossible.
Mikel Arteta’s side’s inconsistency is only one side of the title race story, though. The other is Liverpool’s ruthlessness, and that was underlined with the business-like way they went about Sunday’s game. While Arsenal are craving a match-winner, Liverpool have the most productive forward in the world right now in Salah among their ranks. And just to rub something else into the Gunners’ faces, Slot’s side scored their first goal with a set-piece master play.