Why Pep Guardiola will not give up on a Liverpool title challenge

“The table didn't ever play the game,” was Pep Guardiola’s response when his attention was drawn to the 13-point gap between Manchester City and the side that he still considers to be their closest challengers. Jurgen Klopp may no longer believe that Liverpool are capable of contesting a Premier League title race this season but his greatest rival does. “The opinion I have about this team, nothing changed because of the situation in the table,” Guardiola insisted. “Not one second.”

Guardiola and Klopp are not only the two coaches that have defined English football’s last half-decade. Since Sean Dyche’s dismissal from Burnley, they have also been the top flight’s longest-serving managers as well. Around 10 months separated their appointments at either end of the East Lancs Road. For about four-and-a-half years now, this has been the Premier League’s premier rivalry. It is fair to assume that Guardiola and Klopp know each other - and each other’s football - better than that of any of their other top-flight rivals.

And while Guardiola can be complimentary to the point of insincerity when discussing the merits of any opponent, his admiration for Liverpool has only ever come across as heartfelt and genuine. “In a rival, I have never seen a team like Liverpool in my life,” he said of Klopp’s side at the end of last season, after pipping them to the post on the final day for the second time in four years. “They help us to be a better team season by season, I am 100 per cent convinced of that.”

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Perhaps that is why he is not ready to give up on them yet, even when another side - led by a coaching protégé of his own - is currently ahead of both of them. Arsenal’s steady progress under Mikel Arteta finally appears close to translating into consistent results. And if after four titles in five years means that the crown is firmly resting on Guardiola’s head, then Arteta’s 3-2 victory over Klopp last weekend coupled with Liverpool’s miserable start suggested that there may be a new pretender to the throne.

Not in Guardiola’s mind, though. While preaching for patience to be shown to Arteta, he insisted Liverpool are still the biggest threat. “Always has been, always it is and always will be.” Why? “Because I know the quality they have, they know the quality we have. If I was asked this question with five or ten games left, I will say I think Liverpool cannot catch the top of the league - in that case, Arsenal. But being in the position that we are, with the World Cup, everything can still happen.”

After all, you do not have to go very far back to remember an even greater points gap between these two rivals that was suddenly narrowed. City were 14 points clear of Liverpool back in mid-January. By the time of their next Premier League meeting in April, it had been closed to one. Guardiola took exception to the suggestion City had been reeled in. The 14-point margin had never existed, he claimed. “You were wrong. [Liverpool] had two more games in hand. It's fake.”

He was right to point that out. Liverpool’s games in hand skewed perceptions of just how much ground Klopp’s side had to make up. And even then, in the end, despite only dropping six points between Boxing Day and late May, they did not manage to close the gap to City completely. But the 14-point gap did exist in the black and white of Premier League table’s points column at one stage, and Guardiola’s dismissal of it revealed something: once those games in hand came along, he fully expected Liverpool to win them.

Those are the expectations that Klopp’s side have set for themselves over the past five years, while attempting to meet the arguably ever so slightly higher standard set by Guardiola’s City. Together, the pair shifted the paradigm on what it takes to win a Premier League title, obliterating the 95-point barrier. The long-held record points total of Jose Mourinho’s 2004-05 Chelsea was smashed by City in 2017-18 and would not have been enough to be crowned champions in two of the four seasons since.

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Since that centurion season in 2018, Guardiola has never sounded convinced that City would reach the same heights without a competitive rivalry pushing them further. Perhaps that is why he is eager not to see the defining rivalry in the mini-era of English football suddenly become one-sided. Despite their contrasting starts to the campaign, Guardiola pointed out that City have lost the last two meetings and criticised his players for being “too soft”.

“You have to win duels,” he said. “When they push you, you have to push. When they are there, you have to be there. The semi-finals of the FA Cup, it was tough to recover the incredible effort we had done in Champions League. In the Community Shield, still we were not ready. They were one pace higher than us and without that, against that team, you cannot compete.”

City are the ones playing at a higher pace than Liverpool now. A first victory at Anfield in front of a crowd since 2003 would surely end any hint of a challenge to their title defence from Klopp’s side, even in Guardiola’s mind. But defeat would leave the door still an inch ajar for a team whose pedigree has the City’s manager total respect.