Six Finger Showdown
Games against Manchester City always make my stomach turn whenever we’re in title contention. The closest analogy I can think of to the sick feeling I get from these derbies is the butterflies I get from public speaking or waiting in line for a confessional. Even with City’s recent poor form, it’s impossible to escape the feeling of dread that they are capable of inflicting. Perhaps spending most of my adult life losing the title to City by razor-thin margins inflicted lasting psychological damage. More rationally, it’s sensible not to take the winners of six of the last seven Premier League seasons lightly. Even more so when they seem to be on the decline. Conceding two goals to last place Southampton is surely enough reason not to take the Any Given Sunday phenomenon for granted.
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Widening The Gap
What a match! In many ways, it was the opposite of our game against Brighton. In that game, collective excellence overcame individual shortcomings. For this contest, every man in red played magnificently in a collective performance that shut City down. Erling Haaland was left without much to do. His midfield got bullied by the 3-headed hydra of Gravenberch, Mac Allister, and Szoboszlai. Whenever the ball did come near the Striking Viking, he was shut down. It was a brilliant defensive showing from Joe Gomez and Virgil van Dijk. Virgil himself had a hell of a game. He was exceedingly dangerous on corners, stopped only from making the game 5-0 by mere centimeters.
Cody Gakpo drew first blood. The attacker capitalized on a brilliant combination from Trent Alexander-Arnold and Mohamed Salah. Luis Diaz was all over the place, never giving the opposition a moment to breathe. The Colombian fought tooth and nail for space in the attacking third. He won the penalty to put us 2-0 up courtesy of the Egyptian King himself. Salah is never in doubt. Despite narrowly missing two solid opportunities, he remains the man to take a pen. The archer never misses. This is what he does.
Kelleher continues to earn his place in the starting XI, being entirely unbothered by a City offense desperate for goals. He once again showed that he’s a world-class anti-penalty machine. Having three players come within spitting distance of a hat-trick, having one of the best defensive performances in the Premier League era, and coming away from the defending champions with a clean sheet, it was an artful game.
Rattling The Seemingly Unrattleable
Gratifyingly, Pep Guardiola seemed to know he was beaten. It was hard to take any pleasure from the sight of Pep clawing his face in despair after blowing a 3-0 lead against Feyenoord. This was a refreshing change of pace from that uncomfortable scene. Pep was showing resignation to his fate. The managerial legend had a face instead marked by signs that he realized he had been outplayed by a superior team.
Anfield, naturally, was electric, the crowd noise seeing off Pep’s boys after the hammering they received at our hands. The old standard “you’ll be sacked in the morning” typically lobbed at underperforming managers was met with Pep’s grinning defiance. He in return held up six fingers. Pep clearly meant to indicate how many Premier League titles he had won at the helm of Man City, but it wasn’t long before Liverpool supporters seized upon the gesture as an opportunity to extend the defeat even further. Tongue-in-cheek assertions of what Pep had “really meant” flurried around. It meant how many Champions League titles his hosts had won or how many games out of the last seven he had lost. Some even superimposed a “1” between his two hands, making the new number 115, about the infamous 115 charges of breach of financial fair play that the club is facing.
He Isn’t Going Anywhere…Yet
Of course, no one with any sense believes Pep’s job is in any real danger. The Catalan has a point with his “six” gesture. He is, if nothing else, a proven winner. Moreover, whatever has gone wrong at Manchester City will only get worse with a mid-season change in management. Any replacement would almost certainly be an inferior one. Pep seemed to be surprised at the vitriol leveled in his direction. Never mind that Jurgen Klopp had experienced similar chants at Etihad in his first season in charge.
The whole episode is perhaps best framed as banter between two bitter rivals. There are bound to be genuine hard feelings on the Red side — it’s hard not to feel some type of way when you keep coming in second in your best seasons — but with Pep at least, that feeling does not appear to be mutual.
Breaking Down “The Six”
At the risk of sounding conspiratorial, there’s a deeper significance to the “six” gesture. It is I think a natural element of fan banter to get your hits in where you can. In this instance though, there is a distinct element of reality to the different meanings attached to the number six. Despite our history of narrowly losing out to Pep’s Manchester City for the Premier League title, we have consistently outperformed them in European competition. Man City has never really been able to translate their near-dominance of the English Premier League into regular success in Europe.
The first time they won was in 2023. Outside of that year, they’ve only ever made it to the finals once. Meanwhile, Liverpool won twice in the Premier League era and been runners-up three times on top of that. And that’s before you consider the Europa League. It is a lesser competition to be sure, but one where we have also outperformed every other side in England. We have a sterling history in European competition of which we are justly proud. It stands as paradoxical considering our perennial failures in achieving the domestic title. If the Premier League truly lived up to the hype, the best team in England should be one of the absolute best teams in Europe. But on a pretty regular basis, this is not the case.
International competition is, ultimately, the standard by which every side must be judged, something that challenges the notion that Manchester City’s six titles are merely the product of competitive greatness. Even if you don’t take the cynic’s approach to the question — that the Premier League is a pay-to-win league in a way the Champions League somehow isn’t — the 6-to-6 paradox seems to suggest that each side has something that the other lacks.
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There is of course the fact that plenty of Liverpool’s domestic defeats are by margins so narrow that they can hardly be called straight defeats at all, but titles decided so closely seem to suggest a winner and a runner-up that are at least evenly matched. Not so much in Europe, where Liverpool is fairly objectively the superior side. Our advantages in that arena are often chalked up to factors that are impossible to quantify: the best fan atmosphere in England, our storied history in the competition, the sheer messianic power of our managers, etc.
There is likely something to be said about all of these things. Liverpool has been blessed with the ability to alchemically convert the immense pressure of the competition into gold by sheer force of belief. We are likely better prepared for international competition thanks to our long legacy of being international competitors. But whatever the reason behind the paradox, it exists as a stinging rejoinder to Pep’s touting of his six titles for one simple reason: the truth hurts.
Exiting Murderer’s Row
Taking on the European and English champions in quick succession and beating them both handily in the hunt for their respective titles is a momentous occasion. We are a side whose modern legacy has frequently been defined by our failure to live up to our glorious past. I appreciate Pep’s “six” gesture as a symbol that there’s still some fight left in him, that he recognizes and respects the threat that Liverpool presents to his dominance of the Premier League.
But I also appreciate it as a symbol of what Liverpool have accomplished, both this season and in previous. Decisively outplaying the six-time champions merely serves to highlight the extent to which we are six-time champions in our own right. We will always have the depth of our history to rebut the presumption of Man City’s superiority. Now we will have this game as well.
It’s just too bad we haven’t played anyone difficult yet.
