Vibrant Anfield marks the changing of the Guardiola

There was a lull in the noise, a break in the Anfield atmosphere, when a defiant chant emerged from a corner near Stefan Ortega’s goal.

- RICHARD JOLLY

“City, City, the best team in the land,” came a chorus first aired in the years when the notion was fanciful. For much of the last few years, they have often been branded, sometimes by opponents, as the best team in the world.

Now that description is outdated, inaccurate, almost mocking. Now they are behind Brighton in the table, 11 points adrift of Liverpool, their title race run weeks before Christmas. They have lost six of their last seven games in all competitions, not won against anyone since Erik ten Hag was still Manchester United manager.

Their Carabao Cup exit at Tottenham aside, there is a case for calling a 2-0 defeat at Anfield their most respectable result in the worst run of Pep Guardiola’s managerial career. They are not accustomed to losing to Bournemouth or Brighton, to conceding four at home to anyone or away to Sporting CP. A defeat at Anfield, Guardiola’s personal house of horrors, is nothing new.

If the damning part was not the margin as much as the manner, the instructive element came in Guardiola’s reaction. His histrionics at Anfield have inspired memes. Here he was subdued, stood with his hands in his pockets, a passive Pep resigned to his fate. This time, it seemed, he arrived without hope. His only defiance came in the dying minutes. As Anfield serenaded him with “sacked in the morning”, his riposte was to raise six fingers, one for each of his Premier League titles. There will not be a seventh in 2025.