Liverpool’s thrilling front three remind Steve Bruce of one of the great Manchester United sides from the past

If Liverpool teams are destined to be burdened with comparisons to their illustrious predecessors, it is a sign of the excellence of Jurgen Klopp’s European champions that they instead reminded their latest victim of historic enemies.

Steve Bruce was a stalwart of the Manchester United team who knocked Liverpool off their perch. A quarter of a century later, the Newcastle manager sees similarities, whether in the defensive tactics he and other coaches adopt against favourites, or in the characteristics of Liverpool’s feared front three.

For Sadio Mane and Mohamed Salah, the wingers who double up as sprinters, read Ryan Giggs and Andrei Kanchelskis. For Roberto Firmino, the selfless, catalytic fulcrum who set up two goals in Newcastle’s 3-1 defeat on Saturday, see Eric Cantona.

If it would be heresy for Bruce to rank anyone above United’s iconoclastic Frenchman, the elusive Firmino’s capacity to find space between the lines had echoes of his past. Saturday’s flick to release Salah when the Egyptian scored was the kind of productive trickery in which Cantona specialised.

“Cantona is as good a player as I’ve ever seen,” said the former United captain. “I haven’t seen Firmino week in week out like that, but just when you see him here and what he gives them, it’s a perfect balance. Cantona gave us that. Back in the day, we had Giggs and Kanchelskis who had frightening pace and stretched sides so much like Liverpool’s two, and Cantona dropped into that hole and people couldn’t get anywhere near them. That’s what you see with Firmino.

“He is similar in that he’s one that drifts into that little area and he naturally does it, where it’s so difficult for defenders to go. And his attitude and work rate, it’s so important. Their front three are as good as you are going to play against as a threat to you.”

If there is a fundamental tactical difference, in that the spearhead of Sir Alex Ferguson’s first Double-winning was Mark Hughes while Klopp’s Liverpool have dispensed with the target man, used the wingers further infield and made them more prolific than their United counterparts, it points to an evolution in tactics.

Giggs and Kanchelskis scored a combined 27 goals in 1993-94; it was Salah’s total alone last season and if Mane had one fewer then, he is outscoring the Egyptian thus far this year. Yet the common denominator is that underdogs reconfigure their teams out of worry. The fear factor alters approaches.

Bruce played in a day when 4-4-2 systems were default until opponents started sacrificing a striker against United. Now Liverpool often find themselves facing 5-4-1 formations, shapes which, in other matches, could be called 3-4-2-1 but at Anfield tend to look ultra-defensive.

“Back when I played for United, everybody suddenly started playing one centre forward against us,” Bruce recalled. “Back in the day, everyone played with two, then suddenly they would put an extra midfield player in, and it’s what you have to do because you are under threat of getting a hiding.”

Like a more recent United employee, Jose Mourinho, last December Bruce used a 3-4-2-1 that, in effect, was 5-4-1 at Anfield. Like him, he lost 3-1. The context is different, however: an Old Trafford old boy has spent the majority of his managerial career with bottom-half Premier League sides. He knows the challenges they face against the very best.

“The big difficulty we all have is you have to find a way when you know a team is far better than you – and I say that with no disrespect at all to us,” he rationalised. “A team like Liverpool, they have two full-backs up the pitch, they will attack at every opportunity, then you face being blown away. They can do that to you, and you have to acknowledge that. If you open up against them, and leave big spaces for them to run in behind, then you are totally going to be punished. There’s the that conundrum. When you try to negate them, then you see why they haven’t lost for two years here.”

Matches become damage-limitation exercises. In the context, a 3-1 reverse felt more than respectable. Liverpool’s club record 14 consecutive league wins have all been secured by at least two goals. “They are a very, very good team,” Bruce reflected. The Manchester side he now compares Liverpool to are not United, but City. “At this moment in time is there anyone better? The one down the road, I suppose, at the minute, but they are certainly as good as you get.”