Not for the first time, Pep Guardiola had Liverpool on his mind.
The Manchester City boss had just gathered the senses that were scrambled by the Real Madrid meltdown of Wednesday night when he decided to go firmly on the attack.
In the wake of a 5-0 shellacking of Newcastle that gave his side ample breathing room in the final weeks of this thrilling Premier League title race, Guardiola decided to take on his great rivals.
With the comfort of a three-point buffer now between him and Jurgen Klopp, Guardiola was emboldened enough to offer his thoughts in a kind of Jose Mourinho-style imitation that was so very obviously designed to create a siege mentality at the world's richest club.
“Everyone in this country supports Liverpool, the media and everyone," he told beIN Sport.
They are comments that only add to the feeling from some within the game that Guardiola's paranoia is deep rooted. The world, he would have you claim, is against his City side and it always has been.
Speaking on Friday, he said of the clubs who agreed with a two-year ban from the Champions League for City in 2020: "I cannot forget nine teams in the Premier League who want to sack Manchester City from the league and the European competitions, these nine teams push and I know here [in my head] who they are."
In his own mind, then, the football world and the media are anti-City, pro-Liverpool. Black and white. Cut and dry. The reality is not quite as simple as that though, as shocking as it might be for Guardiola to learn.
He may take umbrage with the fact that his side's success is not more widely championed, but this is a club that has spent close to £1.5bn on transfers since 2008 and been given the access to the very best that money can buy in every facet of the game since the arrival of Sheikh Mansour. Success is to be expected.
His team have drawn plaudits all season for the magnificent passing carousel that so often bewilders opposition and they have some of the greatest footballers in Europe who have helped take Premier League standards to a new level. That is all not in question and if Guardiola thinks he and his team aren't getting credit, he must not be listening intently.
There is simply the fact that such domination has become ceaselessly boring for some neutrals and the imminent arrival of Erling Haaland adds another sledgehammer to bring down on those pesky ants.
But what is perhaps the biggest affront of Guardiola's Liverpool-themed obsession is the claim that his team receive unfavourable media coverage because of who those in that line of work grew up supporting.
After his beIN Sport interview, Guardiola later accused a journalist of supporting Liverpool in his post-match press conference only to be informed it is actually Manchester United who the individual in question followed.
It is a laughable stance that boils everything down to the sort of rank tribalism usually reserved only for the wild west that is social media. This, patently, shouldn't be the viewpoint of the manager of one of the biggest teams in England.
It's enough to conjure up images of the Catalan logging into a Twitter account named @GuardiolaEra or something equally imaginative to fire anonymous barbs at Jurgen Klopp and his players.
It's also offensive to claim that the professional journalists who cover Manchester City cannot see past what he views as their own conceived ideas based on supporting another football team. It's akin to accusing Guardiola of underperforming in the Champions League out of disinterest for City because he is a Barcelona fan. Quaint nonsense, in other words.
But the City boss wasn't finished there. Next came the sort of salvo that will be lapped up by the incessant banter brigade; the social media accounts whose focus is on engaging - and most of the time baiting - some of the biggest fanbases in the world purely to grow their own numbers.
He added: "Of course because Liverpool has an incredible history behind in European competition - not in Premier Leagues, because they’ve won one in 30 years - but I don't care. They have more supporters around the world and in England more support Liverpool than us."
Bravo Pep, you've just gone full Twitter troll.
