All eyes will be set at the Etihad Stadium where last season’s top two teams Manchester City and Liverpool will clash from on Saturday in the Premier League early kick-off game.
This fixture has for the past few years provided a title contending match, but with Liverpool falling a distance behind their rivals, they enter this game with dissimilar ambitions as compared to the Sky Blues.
While Pep Guardiola’s team will be looking to close the gap between themselves and table leaders Arsenal, Liverpool will be looking at reigniting their top four charge.
Jurgen Klopp’s team had bettered their chances of finishing in the Champions League positions when they humiliated Manchester United 7-0 to climb fifth in the table standings with only three points separating them from fourth placed Tottenham Hotspur, but their 1-0 loss to Bournemouth before the International break diminished those chances as the point gap increased to seven.
With a tight schedule that includes Chelsea and Arsenal as their next opponents after City, Liverpool risk missing out on the Champions League next season.
Klopp knows what this period means to his side, and while facing the media in a mandatory press conference earlier today, he referred to the period as a Champions League week while insisting they are not dumb they need to get an immediate response to their latest loss.
“It’s like a Champions League week. I’m super excited, but we are not dumb. We know the last game against Madrid wasn’t a good game, before that at Bournemouth wasn’t a good game. We have to pick up from there and react to the other two games.”
Liverpool will be praying City approach the game without their target man Erling Haaland. Before the international break, Haaland who thus far has 42 goals to his name in his debut season in the Premier League had scored 8 goals in the space of four days.
The Norwegian netted five against Leipzig in the second leg of the Champions League round of 16 before notching a hat-trick against Burnley in the quarterfinals of the FA Cup.
Haaland however, missed his country’s Euro 2024 qualifiers after suffering a groin injury. Guardiola hopes the league’s top scorer with 28 goals gains his full fitness in time for the game, but he insists even without Haaland, City can still find the back of the net.
“We’ll see today and at the end, the doctors and especially the player will decide how does he feel,” Guardiola said. “I spoke with him and he feels good. We will see what happens. Life is risky in these stages.
“In the past, we’ve always scored a lot of goals. Since we are here, and I had the feeling with Roberto Mancini and (Manuel) Pellegrini, it was a team that scored a lot of goals in the season with different players, different strikers different styles of play, they score a lot of goals. This is what I try to do before the end of the season.”
Liverpool have their own Haaland in Mo Salah! The Egyptian may seem off colour this term, but there’s no denying his capabilities in-terms of goal-scoring. This season alone, he has scored in each of Liverpool’s games against Man City; in the Carabao Cup, Community Shield and in the Premier League.
It should also be remembered that Salah netted a hat-trick against Man United enroute to his becoming Liverpool’s all-time top scorer.
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Salah will be joined in the attack by Cody Gakpo and Darwin Nunez who is fit again after recovering from an ankle injury.
Liverpool will however be without Naby Keita (muscle), Thiago Alcantara (hip), Stefan Bajcetic (groin) and Calvin Ramsay (knee) due to injuries. Kostas Tsimikas is a doubt after sustaining a rib injury in Greece’s goalless draw with Lithuania on Monday.
As for Man City, only Phil Foden will be out. The English international underwent an appendix surgery last weekend, and Guardiola confirmed he will be out for two to three weeks.
