Though it may have been an odd thing to suggest before the tie was played, drawing Liverpool was always going to be an uphill battle for Manchester City. Despite their dominance in the league, it was clear that Liverpool enjoyed a stylistic advantage over Guardiola’s uncompromising possession-oriented football. Teams that have been able to execute an intelligent pressing strategy have often found the circumstances to be in their favor when playing against a side who wants to dominate the ball and the fact that City’s only win against Klopp’s Reds came when Sadio Mané kung-fu kicked Ederson in the face, underlined that dynamic. Furthermore, the key to City’s lead in the short time they were 1–0 up on even terms had been out since September. Benjamin Mendy’s role as a wingback in Guardiola’s preferred 3–5–2 formation allowed the sky blues to circumvent the pressure and traps they’ve fallen victim to since.

Though many all too simplistically refer to success against Guardiola as a proper execution of high pressing tactics, the key in these victories is literally a bit lower. With a midfield focused pressing block, Liverpool’s ability to allow Manchester City’s central defenders to have possession while still provoking them, through pressing from different angles, to make risky passes into midfield and sideline areas where their pressing actions could be more effective was how they blew them away in the first leg. This isn’t to say Liverpool didn’t take their opportunities to press high up the field, but they only did so when they felt they could without exposing themselves.

This conscious understanding and quantifiable ability to press less frequently but to do so more efficiently is a marker of just how far his team has come. No longer are they a side that solely thrives in the counter-pressing situations they’ve so infamously become associated with, and yet, it was the root of what has given Klopp’s Liverpool the connotation of an easily exploitable side that allowed them to put the tie beyond all reasonable doubt in the second leg.

You would be hard-pressed to find someone that hasn’t complained about a perceived lack of defensive stability in Klopp’s time at Anfield. The finger assigning blame has moved from midfielders to defenders to goalkeepers and so on, but what has perhaps been the most difficult thing to accept is that the tough positions Klopp’s defenders are often put in are a direct result of how they attack. Their willingness to abandon a compact defensive shape for the sake of inciting transition opens up space that is as useful to Mohammed Salah and Sadio Mané as it is difficult to manage for players like Dejan Lovren and Joel Matip.

As James Yorke of The Ringer writes, this dynamic has markedly improved since they added Virgil Van Dijk to their lineup and will likely continue to do so as their intelligent recruitment continues, but the chaos in which Liverpool often thrive in and, at times, painstakingly die in, worked like a charm in the final forty-five minutes of their quarterfinal matchup.

City’s major tactical shift going into the second leg seemed to be that when they were in their possession shape, a 3–2–5, they varied the two midfielders that were responsible for progressing possession to their forwards. In the first leg, it was a static two player system. Kevin De Bruyne and Fernandinho sat in front of the back three and offered options that, due to their stagnation, could easily be shut off or manipulated into pressing traps. After the switch, David Silva and De Bruyne’s constant rotating from positions further up the field dragged assigned defenders forward and disturbed Liverpool’s defensive formation. This allowed City to have more effective possession, more space for Bernardo Silva & Leroy Sané, and, most importantly, the ability to stay compact.

Part of what makes Manchester City’s well-known use of positional play so potent is their ability to retain possession in a small space. The ball is easier to recycle, passing movements are easier to coordinate, and the tactic that must be present to counter-balance any possession dominant approach, counter pressing, can be executed more efficiently because the ground that needs to be covered when possession is lost is smaller. The switch in City’s midfield resulted in the near-comeback performance witnessed in the first half, but through long balls measured either directly to Roberto Firmino, or ones sent into the channels, the Reds threw away Manchester City’s hopes of a comeback by stretching their tight spacing and creating a game state where City were forced into an inefficient and exploitable shape.

This specific use of unsettling the space through what, at the surface, seemed to be aimless long balls may not have directly resulted in the chances Liverpool capitalized upon but is very much responsible for stopping the onslaught of chance creation we saw in the first half. Though it may seem to be a simple practice of offering City bait, only to compress and win it back, Liverpool’s curated performance and ability to choose the right moments over ninety minutes is what makes their three winning performances against the champions so incredible.

To quote the Manchester City boss himself; “Taking the decision in the right moment. That is the most difficult thing in football.” While he might be referring to the dynamics of his own style, it is with a conscious understanding of the risk of his play that he speaks about the importance of these moments. Succeeding against Guardiola’s latest project is as much about provoking Manchester City as it is not being provoked, and to better understand the complexity of what it takes to beat this incarnation of Guardiola’s ideals, the performances against United and Tottenham provide a perfect contrast to that of Liverpool’s.