Are there signs Liverpool are ready to overtake City?

KEY MAN: Liverpool's Mohamed Salah battles for the ball.

The neutrals and Premier League marketeers will certainly be forgiven for hoping that this is the case as Pep Guardiola eyes up what would be a fifth league title in six years for City.

Such a spell of dominance is hardly unprecedented; after all, Manchester United did precisely that between 1995 and 2001 and, from 1978 to 1984, it was Liverpool themselves who exerted that same stranglehold on the title race.

But the sports world was a very different place 20, let alone 40, years ago and a league that markets itself globally on its high level of competitiveness and unpredictability would hardly benefit from another Guardiola procession to the championship.

These are hardly Scottish Premiership proportions - Celtic 10 Rangers 1, for those keeping score over the past 11 years - but Guardiola’s stranglehold on the Premier League is, or should be, of concern to anyone not in City blue.

Astonishingly, in 13 seasons of elite management with Barcelona, Bayern Munich and City, Guardiola has won the title on 10 occasions. Only once in La Liga and twice in the Premier League has he not finished top.

He will never match Alex Ferguson’s 13 English league titles, but the Catalan’s four here have already seen him leapfrog Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho, leaving him behind only Ferguson, on the list of Premier League managerial champs.

Whatever his shortcomings as a manager, and they tend to be picked apart every year when he fails in the Champions League, Guardiola has mastered the formula for grinding out league titles at an almost unprecedented level.

Or has he? Guardiola’s policy increasingly at City has been to operate with a small squad, in terms of numbers although definitely not in terms of quality.

His argument has always been that he prefers the group dynamic of a smaller unit, not least in so far as it makes his task in upsetting players, whom he cannot select regularly, that little bit easier.

Despite his fanatical tinkering and squad rotation, only 13 City players appeared in half their Premier League games last season meaning that while he often had five, sometimes six, players who had cost in excess of £40 million on his bench; thereafter, his squad was usually made up of talented youngsters.

Crucially, City’s squad looks even more shallow this season. Kalvin Phillips is a straight swap for Fernandinho while Erling Haaland and Julian Alvarez, numerically, replace Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling.

But Guardiola has also allowed utility man Oleksandr Zinchenko to leave, and has yet to sign a left-back replacement, along with a long list of fringe youngsters who could have expected to be on his bench, or at least used in the Carabao Cup.

At best count, Guardiola’s first team squad may now number 20. “If we have a lot of injuries, it will be a problem,” he said yesterday (FRI). “But I like to work with not too many players and we have the academy.” 

Jurgen Klopp at Liverpool, meanwhile, has maintained what many would view as his advantage in squad depth over the summer - Fabio Carvalho, Darwin Nunez and full-back Calvin Ramsey added to Luis Diaz who was brilliant after his January signing.

Of the main departures, the loss of Sadio Mane could yet sting but Takumi Minamino and Divock Origi hardly threaten to be disastrous losses.

In a season that will be interrupted by a six-week World Cup, injuries could prove pivotal and, just as Aymeric Laporte’s long injury lay-off in 2019-20 exposed City’s lack of depth and contributed, in part, to Klopp’s one league title to date, it is not impossible to imagine a major fitness problem costing Guardiola again.

It may not be symbolic or significant but Laporte is already out of the start of this season, and will not play until September at the earliest, after a summer knee op.

Also, do not discount the significance of five substitutes being allowed in the Premier League this season. Guardiola often used one or two replacements last season but Liverpool are already salivating at the prospect of having more fresh bodies to throw into their pressing machine style of play.

"We're really happy with that because it means that we can play intense from minute one until minute 95 - then it is how to use the squad, how to deal that we play every three days,” said Klopp’s assistant Pep Lijnders this week.

Liverpool’s win over City in last week’s Community Shield can be discounted and both managers have deliberately under-prepared their squads ahead of this weekend’s kick-off, trying to extend their summer R and R and pace them for the marathon to come.

But Klopp certainly has cut a confident figure during pre-season and sounded inspirational in the way he has outlined the task ahead to his squad.

Guardiola, meanwhile, enters the final season of his City contract but is generally expected to sign an extension next summer - 2025 has been mentioned as a potential new leaving date.

For the good of Liverpool fans, and maybe all supporters except City’s, it is to be hoped the Catalan has not taken his amazing record to seven league titles by then.