KEVIN MCCALLUM: Guardiola loses his Pep at Anfield

Pep Guardiola didn’t get sacked in the morning. No-one ever thought he would. He may have got whacked in the morning by his missus, Cristina, for not having any tact when he held up six fingers to the Liverpool fans when his City were 2-0 down at Anfield on Sunday.

To the tune of Guantanamera, the Cuban “patriotic” song, Anfield taunted Guardiola with irony and he didn’t get it. He said he didn’t expect Anfield to chant that at him for some sense of mutual respect between him and Liverpool. He adored Jürgen Klopp. They hugged a lot. He was just an opposition manager standing in front of the Kop asking it to love him.

“I’m so proud of my six Premier Leagues against that [Liver­pool] team and the previous team [under Jürgen Klopp]. I didn’t expect Anfield to start chanting at 0-2 that I would be sacked. Maybe I deserved to be sacked with our results! Maybe I’m still in the job because I won six Premier Leagues and a lot of titles,” he rambled after the match.

“They want to sack me. I wish they were more kind. Why didn’t they do it at 0-1? Why didn’t they do it last season when we won the Premier League? Why do they want to sack me now? I didn’t expect that from Anfield, for other clubs like Brighton I can understand it. But for Anfield I didn’t expect this, maybe it is the respect we have. They know we have won six Premier Leagues. But it’s fine, it’s part of the game.”

It’s fine, OK. It doesn’t hurt. I can take it. His smile, as one wag wrote, had the look of someone who had been hit in the face with a snowball as he was trying to show no pain nor embarrassment.

Oh, but it hurt, it hurt so bad that he went full petro-money crazy. Six! I have six! You have one! I have six! Will Liverpool one day chant: “115 charges sitting on the wall and if one small charge should accidentally fall... there will be 114 charges still sitting on the wall!”

Few were impressed. In The Times Martin Samuel wrote that “he has never looked more like a beleaguered José Mourinho.

“Counting off trophies is the sort of gesture Mourinho tends to make when the place is ablaze around him and his players in open revolt. It is a reminder of better days. Managers at the pinnacle do not send out signals like that.

“They don’t need to. There is no jibe that could be thrown Arne Slot’s way right now that would provoke the Liverpool head coach to answer with a callback to the 2022-23 Eredivisie title. Look at the league table this very second, bub. I’ll rest my case right there.”

Jonathan Liew in the Guardian was confused: “Still Guardiola kept holding up six fingers: proudly, almost incredulously, as if discovering the concept of fingers for the very first time. What did it all mean? The number of defeats since they last won a game? The position in which they most desperately require reinforcements in January? The number of touches, over 90 minutes, that Erling Haaland had in the final third?”

For the umpteenth time this season, Slot was asked after the 2-0 win about Mo Salah’s contract and whether this would be the last time Salah would play against City.

Slot is canny with the media, cautious and sometimes mischievous: “Maybe Mo [Salah] knows more about the 115 accusations that are done so he expects [Manchester City] not to be in the Premier League next season. Maybe I’ve said already too much about the joke I’ve just made. So that will probably get the headlines. But it was a joke, I repeat, a joke.”

Anfield has never been a happy hunting ground for Guardiola. He has only won there once, in 2021 during Covid. With no fans in the stadium, there was no-one to sing to him the other versions of Guantanamera he would prefer, such as, “there’s only one Guardiola,” or, “you only sing when you’re winning”. 

City are not done, but Guardiola knows he is presiding over a team that has a huge Rodri-sized hole in it. They look empty inside. On Sunday the Liverpool players were taken aback that the City players were joking with them. Perhaps this is the end of the City empire, for now. Maybe Pep’s gonna crack in the morning.