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Liverpool loss offers a fascinating glimpse into a very different Pep Guardiola

A tone was set immediately after the match when Guardiola entered his post-match press conference and described City’s 3-1 defeat as ‘one of my most proud performances in all my years in management’

Miguel Delaney
Chief Football Writer
Monday 11 November 2019 08:41 GMT
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Liverpool beat City 3-1 on Sunday
Liverpool beat City 3-1 on Sunday

When Pep Guardiola got into the Anfield dressing room, he quickly told his Manchester City players not to go on social media and share their thoughts on “some departments” of their 3-1 defeat to Liverpool.

Goalkeeper Ederson, injured and not playing, evidently didn’t get the message. He’d already writter on Instagram that “the TV guys lost their glasses at home”, presumably in relation to VAR.

It was pretty direct.

Whether Guardiola felt the same is impossible to say, as his own post-match press conference was nowhere near as direct. It was actually pretty difficult to decipher, with a lot of mixed messages, and even more passive-aggression.

But one thing was obvious. He did not seem happy with a number of decisions.

A tone was set when Guardiola came in and described this defeat – which was pretty definitive – as “one of my most proud performances in all my years in management”.

This is the sort of line the Catalan usually reserves for defeats like this, and represented quite a performance in its own right.

It does raise more questions about the exact type of loser he is. He isn’t always the most gracious one, and there are certainly moments when Guardiola just seems like a more internalised version of Jose Mourinho.

The next logical question was naturally about how Guardiola personally finished the game, with those ostentatious “thank yous” to Michael Oliver and his linesmen. The Catalan insisted those comments were “not sarcastic” but, when asked to expand on the actual decisions, just kept repeating “ask Mike Riley” and “the big bosses”.

The City boss conspicuously shook the hand of referees’ head Riley after the game, too.

“The guys who understand everything,” he added. “They know more than me.”

There were also cryptic comments about how City are still learning to be an “elite club”, and to “grow as players”.

The City manager struggled to contain his fury (Getty )

More than a few figures at Anfield wondered whether the implication of this was that they have to learn how to win the decisions like many of the more established elite clubs.

Guardiola, however, wasn’t going that far.

There were passages of the Catalan’s press conference where he seemed to resemble Rowley Birkin QC from the Fast Show, in that there were long streams of consciousness that were difficult to precisely decipher, disrupted by the blurting out of key phrases.

Guardiola was very, very agitated.

Liverpool beat City 3-1 on Sunday

A natural conclusion from all of this is the old classic: that Guardiola is just losing it because he’s losing the title.

It is rare in his career that he has been in this situation – and so far behind the leaders at any point of a season – but the reaction is familiar.

The other side of that is another classic: show me a good loser and I’ll show you a loser. Guardiola’s sense of agitation is exactly why he’s such a winner. This is how much it gets to him. This is how bothered he gets… and seeks to rectify things.

There is now, however, an awful lot to rectify in this title race.

Guardiola of course wasn’t conceding but he did just say Liverpool now have “more chances” to win the title.

He knows how costly this was. Everyone else knew how much it meant to him.

Guardiola didn’t need to explicitly say that.

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