Manchester City vs Liverpool: Pep Guardiola explains why title rivals' 'history' is an advantage

Pep Guardiola believes that Liverpool’s storied history gives them an advantage over Manchester City in this year’s Premier League title race as the two sides prepare to meet at the Etihad on Thursday night.

City are seven points adrift of leaders Liverpool having lost three of their last six league outings and Guardiola admitted earlier this week that dropping yet more points on Thursday would all but end their title defence.

Few at the start of the season could have predicted that Guardiola would be so fatalistic about City’s title hopes by the turn of the new year, especially finishing their record-breaking 2018-19 campaign 19 points ahead of their nearest challengers.

Guardiola, however, believes that expectations of City dominance were unrealistic given their modest past, while more historically-successful clubs like Liverpool are helped by having “something special” to defend.

“Maybe people expected we would always be top but we are Manchester City, we are not Liverpool or Manchester United. We are Man City,” he said on Wednesday. “In that situation, [not being top] is quite usual in the club’s whole history. That is why it is nice after what we have achieved in the last decade to still be up there.

“When I was a little boy I looked at the Premier League from Catalonia, from outside, it was always two or three teams and City was not there. That is why when the people from Abu Dhabi took over and the people was working here, [Roberto] Mancini’s group and Manuel [Pellegrini] and now ourselves, we try to be in there.

“The last decade our club has been incredible. Every time here in the last six or seven years qualifying for the Champions League, but that doesn’t win games. Tomorrow that’s not going to happen.

“It’s not because of history but it’s there. And I know what it means when you go on the biggest stages and what you have behind, it helps you take a step forward and defend something special.

“Maybe in the next decade the players will feel it when they come here. Our target is there now. It’s higher, more higher than that and that is what I want to maintain.”

Even if the Anfield's trophy cabinets are more full than those at the Etihad, City have unquestionably been the more successful side in recent years. While the last of Liverpool’s 18 league titles infamously came 29 years ago, three of City’s five were won within the last decade.

“Yes but history is not ten years, it’s much more, it’s longer,” Guardiola responded when this point was put to him. “Anfield is Anfield, Old Trafford is Old Trafford, and the history is there and the Champions Leagues are there and the people when they put the t-shirt on from then they know what they have to defend.”

Guardiola admitted that, as reigning champions, City perhaps have less “hunger” than this time last season, when the majority of his players were still waiting to earn their first Premier League winners’ medals.

The City manager added that Liverpool’s players now have the same hunger that his side showed last season, as they seek to win the first trophy of Jurgen Klopp’s three-and-a-half year reign as manager.

“My feeling is last season it was a little bit easier to maintain that hunger because 80 per cent of the players had not won anything in our lives,” Guardiola said.

“I can feel what they feel, the Liverpool players. After 27 years not winning the Premier League, to be there to win the Premier League. I understand. And I said to the players, that’s the difficult to handle that. That is why in this season it’s [about] maintaining that and we are going to do it for as far as possible.”

City’s hopes of victory on Thursday were boosted by the news that playmaker Kevin De Bruyne has returned to training.

The Belgian missed Sunday’s 3-1 victory at Southampton with a muscle problem, having only recently returned to action from a knee ligament injury, but he will undergo a late fitness test on Thursday morning before a decision is made on his availability.