Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp is Pep Guardiola's kryptonite.
The charismatic German has beaten Guardiola more than any other manager — a total of seven victories for Klopp dating back to meetings between the two in the Bundesliga.
This is a remarkable achievement, especially if one considers how dominating Guardiola's teams (be it Barcelona, Bayern Munich or Manchester City) normally are.
There are generally two ways to celebrate an amazingly great thing happening in one's life.
The first way is a celebration that is wild but contained enough to retain the appearance of responsible adulthood. This is generally reserved for adult-type happy occasions such as engagements, weddings, promotions, raises, job offers, grad school acceptances, etc.
The second is this:
This is how Pep Guardiola celebrated when Manchester City beat Chelsea.
Pep Guardiola has it all backwards when it comes to the festive schedule. In a postmatch interview after his side beat Watford 3-1, Manchester City’s manager discussed the busy fixture list and how the English FA doesn’t care about its players. That’s not what we’re taking issue with; we totally agree with that. What we think Guardiola, perhaps the best coach of this generation, is wrong about is why people watch football.
“We’re going to kill them,” Guardiola said of playing two matches in three days. “Here in England they don’t protect their players.”
When a pitcher throws a no-hitter in baseball, there is always at least one play in which the pitcher keeps his perfect game intact not through anything he does but through a brilliant play from his defense. If Manchester City is trying to throw a no-hitter by going unbeaten this season, Sunday’s match was a prime example of succeeding not because of what City did, but because of what Crystal Palace didn’t do.
Today, Chelsea manager Antonio Conte called on the Premier League’s also-rans to work together to stop Manchester City from landing Southampton’s Virgil van Dijk in the January transfer window.
Back in August of 2017, The18 staff writer Connor Fleming predicted that Manchester City’s Bernardo Silva would be the signing of the season. What a prat that guy is, but hey, that guy is me.