Jurgen Klopp got one thing right when he spoke to reporters on Friday.
He said Manchester City would not like what he was going to say and they didn't. Not one bit.
The Liverpool manager had been asked how his team can keep up with the Premier League champions following the signing of Erling Haaland, the goalscoring phenomenon who has started incredibly since his £51m summer move. Adding one of the best strikers in the world to one of the best teams is a pretty fearsome combination, in fairness.
Also read: Man City claim their bus was attacked on way out of Liverpool FC stadium
First, Klopp could have said nothing at all. Managers generally know when what they say will generate headlines, and choose when to feed the media cycle and when not to.
He could have pointed to the £64m signing of Darwin Nunez (rising to £85m with achievable add-ons) and the £400,000-a-week agreed to make Mo Salah the best-paid player in Liverpool's history. He could have questioned why his owners had not spent even more to strengthen the team and the squad, given that - as this excellent article goes into detail on - some would argue Fenway Sports Group appear to have paid more attention to maximising their profits than giving the club more spending power.
Instead, the German coach played into the tedious and factually incorrect narrative that City have spent years fighting, that somehow they have stacked the game in their favour. "Nobody can compete with City," he said, and went on to say that the Blues were one of three clubs in world football (the others being PSG and Newcastle, the only other teams with backing from Gulf states) that can "do what they want financially" and 'have no glass ceiling' while everyone else including Liverpool has to shop around in the bargain bucket.
The comments were demonstrably untrue on almost every level. City can point to three independent judges at the Court of Arbitration for Sport and confirm that the Blues have not done what they want financially but have in fact played by the same rules as anyone else.
A bumper summer of sales for City has sent their net spend soaring, making their figures healthier than Liverpool over the past five years - their net spend over the last five years is £130m compared to £181.3m for Liverpool - despite spending over £250m more in the market. When you factor in that they received £145m for Philippe Coutinho, a grand total of £217.3m received in transfer fees over a five-year period suggests that Liverpool are not as good a selling club as their reputation would have you believe.
An average wage bill over the last five years for which there are figures (going up to the 2020/21 season) in which Liverpool's total is 92 per cent of City's further demolishes the idea that Liverpool cannot compete, as does the fact that transfer fees paid for Manu Akanji, Julian Alvarez and Sergio Gomez come to less than half of what Liverpool expect to pay for Nunez alone.
If the Merseyside club seriously cannot go for the best players in the market, it must be a different Liverpool that are set to contend for Jude Bellingham in the summer. The Dortmund midfielder may not have the biggest wages but will still likely command a nine-figure transfer fee to reflect his status as one of the most exciting talents emerging in the game.
The irony of glass ceilings was lost on Klopp too when he (erroneously) bemoaned that three clubs have them: Liverpool were, of course, the leading British club aiming to set up a European Super League that would have made an unsmashable glass ceiling for all but a few elite sides before fan backlash forced the collapse of the idea. Maybe some glass ceilings are better than others.
That hypocrisy is at the heart of why there was so much fury within the corridors of power at the Etihad over Klopp's comments. They have been fighting for years to clear their name against unsubstantiated smears in a world where the words of any high-profile figure can do far more damage than the cracked windscreen of a bus.
The Liverpool manager made all of the Sunday back pages about how it was impossible to compete with City, rather than putting the focus on how the man who just three months ago had said he had the best left-back and right back in the world, four of the best centre-backs in the world and one of the best goalkeepers in the world was going into this fixture 13 points adrift. But it also sparked an anger that only got worse on Sunday as both clubs took swipes at each other around the match and neither came out looking good.
For City bosses, Klopp used the same tactics as La Liga supremo Javier Tebas in attacking them on their most sensitive issue by unfairly suggesting that they were operating on a different financial level to everyone else - even if their owners are significantly richer, the difference in terms of money actually spent is far closer. And what made it worse was that there was no need to answer in such a way ahead of a fixture loaded with unsavoury incidents.
If it can feel like it is impossible to compete with City, that is more down to do with their sustained high performance in a number of areas in recent years where individuals who are some of the best in the world in their job have excelled. Some within the club feel the response from their chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak in 2019 to Tebas is as valid for Klopp now.
“I will not accept for this club to be used as a diversionary tactic on poor investment decisions from other clubs," he said. "People make decisions – they’ve got to live by them.
“We’ve managed ourselves well and we will be judged by facts and facts alone. This is a well-run club. That’s a fact – a well-managed wage-to-revenue ratio that compares to some of the best-run clubs in his league, La Liga, but, frankly, in all of European football.
“With success, there is a certain level of jealously, envy, whatever you call it – that’s part of the game.”
There are many in the game who will have agreed with Klopp or will not understand the depth of City frustration, and it certainly does not excuse or condone the unacceptable chanting heard from the City end on Sunday. However, it does help to explain why the aftermath of the incidents around the game have been so ugly as a rivalry that wasn't pleasant to begin with got several notches worse.
On the pitch at Anfield, Liverpool certainly showed they can compete by inflicting Guardiola's first defeat of the season. Off it, City will not hesitate to fire back in future if there is any more from Klopp about the spending of the two clubs.
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