Manchester City’s serial award-winning boss Pep Guardiola has been training his focus on Liverpool head coach Arne Slot after having noticed positive changes in the squad and their match-winning performances after the season kicked off.
Guardiola has openly admitted he is made to watch Liverpool games on a more regular basis following the sudden departure of Jurgen Klopp. In the eight years they went head-to-head with each other in the Premier League, the Spaniard had formed an intense, compelling rivalry with the former Reds boss, with both intensely facing off in games in high quality performances to decide the winner in titles involving the two clubs over four separate seasons.
Before that, the rivalry had already begun as the duo also spent time battling for supremacy in the Bundesliga during Guardiola’s stint as Bayern Munich boss and Klopp’s Borussia Dortmund tenure, ensuring both individuals gained an in-depth understanding of the strategies and styles of play deployed by their counterpart.
However, now that Klopp seems to have cantered off into his sunset prematurely, Guardiola must prepare anew to face off against the German’s successor Arne Slot, and work out the best ways and new strategies to outsmart the Dutchman. Guardiola’s savvy and experience will first be put to the test against Slot’s squad at Anfield on November 30, with the reverse fixture at the Etihad taking place in February.
Elucidating on how the appointment of Slot has compelled him to dig deep into the football archives, the City boss told Sky Sports: “When I play a new club in the Champions League that I don’t know, I see much more than playing against Arsenal, for example. Of course I want to watch Arsenal a lot, but Mikel has been there four or five years.
“And before with Jurgen Klopp and Liverpool. Now I have to watch more Liverpool because of Arne: I don’t know exactly what they do. But with Jurgen, we knew each other better.
“When I was younger, I watched much, much more than now. Now I’m lazier. I think I watch well enough to understand what the opponents want to do. I try to choose the right footage to show my players, to convince them of what to do to try and beat them.”
Not surprisingly, the compelling Guardiola and Klopp era was indeed a key factor in the new Liverpool head coach’s coming to Merseyside, as made clear by Slot himself. “I think for everyone who loves football it was a fantastic era to watch the both of them getting the best out of each other,” he said in June.
“Liverpool came along and – like I just told you about the rivalry between City and Liverpool and the many games we as football fans saw – it wasn’t a difficult choice to make.”