With six fingers raised to a delirious Anfield crowd, Pep Guardiola offered defiance and belief. He would not be laughed out of town. Write off a man with half a dozen Premier League medals at your peril. If only his charges had shown such qualities. Their title challenge might no longer seem like a pipe dream.
It is not so much the 11 points that separate Manchester City from Liverpool after a 2-0 defeat that could have been so, so much worse. So many of those half-dozen triumphs have come when Guardiola's men have dug their own graves only to leap up in the spring. Defeats in six from their last seven (the other of which felt no less like a loss) offered no hope that this City might find the propulsive force to drag themselves from fifth to first by the end of May. Fifth to fourth: that sounds about right.
Guardiola's tactics were a muddle and his players either haave too many of this Anfield defeats in their legs or too few. More even than their physical and tactical deficiencies, City came to the home of their greatest recent rivals utterly cowed by the prospect of what might have been. From the outset, they approached this contest hoping only to avoid a beating. The scoreline might suggest mission accomplished. It would be wrong to think so.
The problems, then, began before Guardiola picked his XI. Still ... if Matheus Nunes and Rico Lewis wide in a 4-4-2 is the answer, is the question how can I exacerbate my team's creative deficiencies while not mitigating any of the defensive issues? Guardiola himself would acknowledge he has earned a mountain of credit from the past eight years at City. That doesn't change the fact his team selection is increasing the jeopardy he is in.
The rich history of Guardiola vs. Jurgen Klopp had plenty of pummellings for both sides but it is hard to remember an occasion where a midfield seemed so utterly overwhelmed in and out of possession. Trent Alexander-Arnold inverted infield to form a central three and yet Nunes seemed loath to follow him. Instead, Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva looked every day their combined 64 years. The former in particular could not buy a moment to take a touch, so aggressive was the Liverpool press.
Of course, Rodri would alleviate these troubles. Frankly, at the moment, one wonders if Guardiola was too sniffy about Kalvin Phillips. A bit more muscularity would only have partly eased City's problems.
So much else was a mess. Guardiola might reasonably have hoped that Nunes and Lewis would have offered a bit more nous to the press but the inactivity of Erling Haaland and Phil Foden meant Alexander-Arnold had all the space he needed to assess his options and ping a pass into the space behind the high line. It really is football 101 that you cannot push your defense high up if there is no pressure on the ball. Guardiola has coached Haaland for long enough to know that his No.9 might not do enough when Liverpool had the ball.
A fizzing ball over the top and Mohamed Salah was away down the right. Easing into the box, he held and held possession, his gaze fixed on Cody Gakpo. At just the right moment, he fizzed his low cross. All that was required of Gakpo was his presence at the back post. Kyle Walker, meanwhile, seemed absorbed in something else entirely, a look of feint bafflement on his face when he realized that he was in fact due to be defending his back post from 4 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.
He wasn't the only one who seemed utterly unaware of the assignment. Three times in the first hour Virgil van Dijk was allowed to get into prime heading positions off Liverpool corners, hitting post and side-netting while flicking the best opening just wide. Gakpo should have at least tested Stefan Ortega when he took the ball off the boots of a high-pressing Alexander-Arnold. Amid the chaos, Nathan Ake stood out for all the right reasons. Twice-long balls from Alexander-Arnold set Salah away down the right. Twice the big toe of the Ake boot saved City from more danger.
At the other end, the best the visitors could do was have a moment. At the midway point of the first half, that amounted to four touches in the box and no shot. That didn't come until the 40th minute. Guardiola's introduction of Jeremy Doku and Savinho asked the right sort of questions of the Liverpool fullbacks, at least for a time. Still, however, their most dangerous spells tended to conclude with a Liverpool player bearing down on goal. Salah bent over the pick of those. Gakpo should have scored another too.
Liverpool seemed intent on making life easier on City. City seemed intent on making life harder on City. And so Ruben Dias tried to backheel a bouncing ball away from Darwin Nunez when even a player as cultured as him would know it was usually one to be booted. Walker came steaming in to roll the ball to Luis Diaz and stick out a boot that was, as with everything else from the England international this season, too late. Ortega caught Diaz and Salah wasn't going to scruff up his second penalty of the week.
It's mid-December and there seems no way back for City. A defense populated by strangers is combined with an attack that has no idea what to do if it can't feed the ball to Haaland. Kevin De Bruyne isn't fixing all this single-handedly. Rodri could Lazarus himself back into the XI and you'd still be asking if the central midfielders ahead of him have too many miles on the clock, if the wingers need more reps to be ready to compete with the best.
City look like a shadow of their former selves and play like they know it. The fixture list might be a little more favorable over the next week but the 11-point gap between the champions and a side hell-bent on claiming the crown is more liable to expand. On this evidence, it will be quite a while before Guardiola is raising that seventh finger.
