Pep Guardiola explains what Man City did to Mohamed Salah and what Pep Lijnders told him

Pep Guardiola

Pep Guardiola thanked his Manchester City players for the gift of a dominant victory against Liverpool on his 1,000th game as a manager.

The Reds slumped to a miserable 3-0 reverse at the Etihad on Sunday afternoon that effectively ended the defence of their Premier League title.

Erling Haaland missed a penalty but then opened the scoring before a deflected Nico Gonzalez strike and a Jeremy Doku finish sent Arne Slot’s side tumbling to a fifth defeat in their last six top-flight games.

While Liverpool are now down in eighth, City have moved only four points behind runaway leaders Arsenal.

Guardiola said:

“Thank you to the players for this gift, against the most important opponents we have faced in my 10 years by far.

“To see players like (Andy) Robertson and (Mohamed) Salah in so many battles, hopefully there will be more and more.

“We press high to regain the ball quick and I like to see my team do short passes and have the ability to run. The first half was really, really good offensively and defensively.

“Second half we talk about the duels and everybody in our mindset is we have to win the duels. We spoke a lot about the duels in the last few days.

“In the start of the second half we lost some duels and the game became more difficult for the players in the middle. But the back four and Nico (Gonzalez) were outstanding.

“It had the feeling we were back in many ways. I didn’t like the second half, really not like in the first half. But we have to grow as a team. It was important win, we are second in the table.”

Guardiola, now assisted by Jurgen Klopp's former number two at Liverpool, Pep Lijnders, highlighted the performances of both Doku and left-back Nico O’Reilly, who was up against Mohamed Salah.

Guardiola

“Salah has been a nightmare for many years and Nico said he had to be aggressive with him,”

“It helped that whenever Mo had the ball we had three or four players around him.

“You will never have a better test as a full-back than to face Salah. Defensively we were really good, especially in the first half.

“Conor (Bradley) the right-back I was really, really impressed with, Pep Lijnders said he could do everything.

“I know the game against (Real) Madrid how good he was against Vinicius. “And Jeremy handled it, aggressive with and without the ball. He played an outstanding game.”

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