Liverpool – Manchester City. Weakest link game

Liverpool – Manchester City. Weakest link game

During the Champions League draw with a light touch of Andriy Shevchenko, the football world received a couple of quarter-finalists, Liverpool – Manchester City. In this material we will try to understand, why the Citizens are called the favorites in bookmakers and will the Merseysiders be able to repeat the achievement of the second round of the EPL.

There is a concept in football ,which is called the Weakest Link game. It doesn’t matter how many high-quality performers are in the team. What‘s important if there is a player in the squad, who doesn’t reach the level of his partners. If such a footballer is present, the opponents will hit the weakest king from the overall chain of players.

Liverpool and Manchester City know how to play in attack. Liverpool’s three, which consists of Sadio Mane, Roberto Firmino and Mohamed Salah has scored 75 goals in all tournaments this season. The midfield raises questions, but defense does this even more. Van Dijk’s arrival fixed the stalemate situation in the Reds’ center of defense. Robertson covers the left flank and the right side is in hands of Trent Alexander-Arnold. In the wake of Clyne’s unpreparedness and Joe Gomez’s injury, the 66th number has guaranteed himself a spot in the starting squad on the match against Manchester City.

Trent is progressing fast, however, using him in the Champions League quarter-finals against Manchester City is fraught with pernicious consequences. Onecan remember the match against Manchester United in which scored two goals from the Scousers’ right lateral zone.

To confirm these words, Jurgen Klopp said in an interview:

“There is no big difference. It’s just that Pep’s teams were always better than mine. Let’s take Manchester City. They have much more points in the Premier League than we do. But the difference has never been so insignificant than now. When we were managing Borussia and Bayern respectively, it was enormous.”

Manchester City have four players in the infirmary. Aguero, Mendy and Stones deserve attention among those. In the match of Liverpool and the Citizens in the second round, Jurgen Klopp’s team defeated Guardiola’s side and the weakest link of the guests was Stones. Due to Klopp’s “Hyperpressing”, his attack managed to derail the English center-back and constantly take away the ball from him.

In the upcoming match, Manchester City’s defense will have Vincent Kompany in the roster and who booked his place in the squad after four months of a break due to injuries. The right flank of Liverpool’s defense will be subject to outside testing by Leroy Sane, who has got 20 efficient actions in the EPL this season. Fernandinho will execute the destructive function and De Bruyne – creative one. Thus, the weakest link in both teams is Trent Alexander-Arnold, and bookmakers were right, having offered the odds on the Citizens’ advancement 1.44, and on Liverpool – 2.70.

However, the team from Anfield has never been bothered by operators’ offers and they went out on the pitch and set their own odds. Therefore the first part of the spectacle will be played on Wednesday, which will end at Etihad in a week.