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Half time: Man City 2-0 Liverpool
Pep Guardiola’s 1000th game as a manager is going swimmingly. Manchester City have been good rather than spectacular - but they lead Liverpool 2-0 and Erling Haaland has had a penalty saved. Haaland made amends by putting City in front, Virgil van Dijk had an equaliser disallowed for a pedantic offside and then deflected Nico Gonzalez’s long-range shot past Giorgi Mamaradashvili.
45+6 min Gary Neville is putting the boot in on Liverpool – he says they look “leggy”, have “lost every single battle” and put in a “worrying performance”.
45+5 min “Ok, I accept that Mike Dean knows more than me,” begins Matt Dony, “but reading Law 11: Offside on the FA website, I can’t see how Robertson was offside. He made no attempt to play the ball, no movement towards the ball, didn’t interfere with any City players’ ability to play the ball or challenge any of them, and wasn’t in Donnarumma’s line of sight. I don’t know what’s going on any more.”
One City corner led to another, this time on the left. It was taken short and worked infield to Nico Gonzalez, whose low drive from 25 yards hit Van Dijk – who waved a lazy right leg – and wrongfooted Mamardashvili.
GOAL! Man City 2-0 Liverpool (Nico 45+3)
A hammer blow to Liverpool on the stroke of half-time.
45+2 min Bernardo Silva finds Cherki, who clips a cross that is headed behind by Van Dijk. It’s been a strange half, lacking the intensity we usually see in this fixture.
45 min The VAR checks and a couple of bits of treatment mean there will be seven minutes of added time.
45 min “In two minds about that disallowed goal,” writes Joshua Keeling. “Under the letter of the law it’s technically correct - he was in an offside position and he ducked under the ball. But at the same time, Donnarumma wasn’t getting to that header. So I’m on the fence.”
Yeah, it’s a tough one because there was no material impact on the goal.
42 min Wirtz has a shot blocked at source after a smart turn just inside the City area. This is Liverpool’s best spell.
41 min Bernardo Silva is booked for tripping someone.
Van Dijk's goal is disallowed
39 min Van Dijk beat Donnarumma with a majestic header from a corner. Robertson – in an offside position three yards from goal – ducked to allow the ball to go over him and into the net. He wasn’t in Donnarumma’s eyeline, nor did he impede his dive - but Mike Dean, on Sky, says it was the correct decision in accordance with the current interpretation of the law.
Arne Slot does not concur.
Virgil van Dijk thinks he’s equalised for Liverpool – but there’s a VAR check…
36 min Mac Allister trips Doku and is booked.
35 min Given City’s occasional susceptibility to counter-attacks, the decision to pick Wirtz ahead of Cody Gakpo probably wasn’t the best. Then again, I can’t imagine Arne Slot expected his team to have so little of the ball in the first 35 minutes.
32 min Liverpool, strangely passive in possession at 0-0, will have to come out and play now.
30 min That goal ultimately stemmed from some excellent one-touch passing/escapology from City when they were surrounded by Liverpool players in their own half.
Erling Haaland heads City in front. It was a slightly odd goal: the right-back Nunes curled a standard cross to the far post, where Konate and Haaland challenged for the header. The ball brushed Konate’s head, hit Haaland a millisecond later and looped slowly into the net. No idea how much Haaland knew about it. He won’t care, nor should he.
GOAL! Man City 1-0 Liverpool (Haaland 29)
If at first you don’t succeed…
27 min Nico Gonzalez is booked for a cynical foul on Wirtz, who slipped a couple of City players neatly and would have led a Liverpool break.
26 min Doku barrrels past Bradley in the area, then twists back outside Gravenberch and whacks a shot from a tight angle that is touched round the near post by Mamardashvili. It was probably going wide but Mamardashvili couldn’t take a chance and his reactions were excelllent.
25 min I thought, after Brian Brobbery’s equaliser for Sunderland against Arsenal, that both teams would come flying out of the traps. It’s been the opposite; Doku aside, the attacking players have done the square root of bugger all.
23 min O’Reilly is going to continue for now. Gary Neville, king of the calf strain in his playing days, thinks O’Reilly’s game could be over.
22 min Maybe not: O’Reilly is down and needs treatment. Looks like a calf problem; he jarred it slightly when shaping to block a possible Salah shot.
21 min A better spell for Liverpool, with Salah getting on the ball in the final third. O’Reilly v Salah should be a fascinating contest today.
20 min “Haaland penalty?” sniffs Peter Oh. “Mama(rdashvili) said knock you out!”
19 min “You’re correct that this a big game,” says Paul Griffin. “Yuge. But does that mean that penalty incident is the biggest thing that’s ever happened? Or is it bigger than that?”
Bigger. This liveblog should be written by Walter Cronkite.
18 min Doku surges down the left and slides a square pass intended for Foden on the edge of the area. Instead it nicks off a defender and reaches Cherki, whose shot deflects off Konate and over the bar.
Doku has been electric.
16 min The penalty drama aside, it’s been a surprisingly bloodless start to the game. City are keeping the ball a lot better.
15 min On reflection, that wasn’t a particular bad penalty from Haaland – it was a fantastic save from Mamardashvili because the ball would have ended up in the bottom corner.
14 min There was another VAR check to see whether Mamaradashvili was off his line before the kick was taken. But he timed it perfectly and made a superb save.
Mamardashvili saves Haaland's penalty!
13 min Not the greatest penalty – swept low to the right but not hit with ferocious power. Even so, what a moment for Mamaradashvili, who got down excellently to push it away.
12 min There was a mistake from Konate earlier in the move – he got in Bradley’s way and kicked the ball against Doku, who was first onto the ricochet and then went past Mamardashvili.
Liverpool aren’t happy. Their argument, I suspect, is that Doku initiated the contact. I’m not sure he did.
Penalty to City!
11 min Mamardashvili’s knee caught Doku’s left foot and tripped him. It wasn’t deliberate but it was a foul.
9 min: Big penalty appeal for City! Doku gets away from Bradley and Konate, goes past the outrushing Mamaradashvili and then falls over. Was he tripped? There was an almighty scramble after that, with a couple of shots blocked.
I think this will be a penalty to City.
8 min At the other end Salah, full of intent, knocks a bouncing ball into the City area, forcing the last man Dias to step across and clear.
7 min Doku leads a City break and plays a brilliant angled pass to Foden… who miscontrols it. Crikey. With a good first touch he would have had a clear shooting chance on his right foot.
6 min “I’m not sure how other Liverpool fans might feel about Wirtz being in the team,” wonders Peadar de Burca. “He’s obviously great, and he needs games to get his Premier League groove on, but why do I keep thinking of Juan ‘too good for the Premiership’ Veron...? Still, it would be great fun to hear Slot say, “He’s a f***ing great player and you’re all f***ing idiots.”
It’d be even better if he went full Fergie and said ‘Youse’.
5 min Doku, who has made a lively start, nicks a loose ball on the edge of the area and forces his way between two Liverpool defenders. A third red shirt, Konate, steps across to clear.
5 min Gravenberch is penalised twice in the space of a minute for tackles on O’Reilly and Doku. Nothing naughty or yellow card-worthy, but I need to write something here.
4 min “Afternoon Rob,” begins Simon McMahon. “When you said ‘technical problems galore’, I thought you were offering a concise three-word history of Scottish football.”
That’d need to be a four-word history surely?
3 min A slow start, with City passing the ball around meticulously in the middle third and Liverpool trying to set traps.
1 min Peep peep. Liverpool kick off from right to left as we watch; this, as you probably know by now, is Pep Guardiola’s 1,000th game as manager.
The teams, then. Manchester City, who made a few changes v Dortmund in midweek, go back to the XI that beat Bournemouth a week ago. Liverpool are unsurprisingly unchanged from the win over Real Madrid.
Here’s what happened in the 2pm games.
Apologies folks, we’ve had technical problems galore. When I say ‘we’…
All sorted now, and this very big game is about to kick off.
Team news
Manchester City (4-3-3ish) Donnarumma; Nunes, Dias, Gvardiol, O’Reilly; Bernardo, Nico, Foden; Cherki, Haaland, Doku.
Subs: Trafford, Reijnders, Stones, Ake, Marmoush, Ait-Nouri, Savinho, Bobb, Lewis.
Liverpool (4-3-3ish) Mamardashvili; Bradley, Konate, Van Dijk, Robertson; Szoboszlai, Gravenberch, Mac Allister; Salah, Ekitike, Wirtz.
Subs: Woodman, Gomez, Endo, Kerkez, Isak, Chiesa, Jones, Gakpo, Ngumoha.
Referee Chris Kavanagh.
Preamble
Hope comes in many forms. Faith. An unlikely human connection. A crescendo of such defiant beauty that you briefly forget the utter state of everything. And a 2-2 draw at the Stadium of Light. Brian Brobbey’s late equaliser for Sunderland against Arsenal last night was exceedingly good news for Manchester City and Liverpool, who should be full of the joys going into this afternoon’s game at the Etihad Stadium.
They have the chance to close the gap on Arsenal to four and five points respectively. That’s the good news; the bad news is that only one of them – tops – can do it. City and Liverpool seem to be hitting their stride after dodgy spells earlier in the season. City have won 10 of the last 13 in all competitions; Liverpool ended their slump with defiant victories over Aston Villa and Real Madrid.
They kept clean sheets in both games, too. That won’t be so easy against Erling Haaland, the red wine of any contemporary clean sheet metaphor. Haaland is in rampant form, with 10 goals in his last six games at the Etihad, and has gone to another level this season. He was vaguely competent beforehand.
Kick off 4.30pm.
