Gavin Cooney

WE HOPE YOU enjoyed your break, because English Football Ltd is back once again in all of its voracious, ceaseless, relentless and often inglorious glory. 

The EFL kicked off last night and the Premier League returns next Saturday, earlier than usual to accommodate the deracinated World Cup uneasily re-housed across November and December. 

The Community Shield raises the curtain on the top flight this afternoon, a tradition differently hued by being held at the King Power Stadium in Leicester as Wembley is booked up for the European Championship final. More familiar are the teams in action: Manchester City and Liverpool, the definitive English football rivalry of this era and one of the best in the country’s history. They have been the top two for three of the last four seasons, and remain the sides for Spurs, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Man United to catch this time around. 

Here are three key questions facing both sides ahead of a new season. 

1. The big lads up top 

Erling Haaland. Joe Robbins Joe Robbins

Pep Guardiola is the most important figure in the game’s tactical and stylistic developments in the last 15 years, and Jurgen Klopp has a case to be made as the second-most important. Guardiola always rankled at the tiki-taka moniker for his Barcelona side (in terms of catch-all titles, he prefers juego de posicion), and the best tactic for keeping it in check became Klopp’s gegenpressing. 

To use the ideas of another philosopher, it’s all a little Socratic – if Pep dreamed up the thesis, Klopp countered with the antithesis and now we have the synthesis, where both coach’s deepest beliefs have melded with the other’s, and perhaps that’s why City and Liverpool play out so many stone-cold classics. 

Both men have become influenced by one another since they started slugging it out in England. Klopp, for instance, signed Thiago Alcantara, the kind of player Guardiola would design in a lab. Guardiola, meanwhile, has found inspiration from Liverpool in moving his full-backs from in-field to closer to the touchlines and asking them to share a significant part of the creative burden. (Joao Cancelo is wearing the number seven this season, for instance.) . 

There’s another obvious similarity seen in this summer’s business as both have pushed their chips in on big number nines. 

Erling Haaland arrives at City with a guarantee of goals, but it will be interesting to see if there are any unintended consequences that might imbalance Guardiola’s obsessively crafted ecosystem. 

The City machine has run slickly to this point without a central striker, but will Haaland’s introduction compromise some of the other, effective parts? 

Darwin Nunez. Imago / PA Images Imago / PA Images / PA Images

And what of Darwin Nunez at Liverpool? Klopp this week described Roberto Firmino as “the soul” of his team, and that Liverpool could not have played as they have done without him. Nunez, though, will play up front instead of Firmino, so how will that affect Liverpool’s output? (Write your own jokes about involving Darwin in a process of evolution.) 

On the face of it, both City and Liverpool are making significant changes to their approach, and from a position of such strength that they have only a tiny margin for improvement in the first place.

But that tiny margin will decide who finishes ahead of the other this season. It’s going to be fascinating. 

2. Managing the transition 

Mane and Sterling, playing for their new clubs.

‘Transition’ is usually a word the mediocre cling to for comfort, as proof that things might one day be better. (We now enter Manchester United’s tenth-straight season of transition.) The best sides undergo their transition without having to utter the word. (See Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United.) 

This is what’s happening at City and Liverpool at the moment. Fernandinho has left City, as was predicted, and also exiting are Raheem Sterling, a bedrock of previous league triumphs, and dependable squad players, Jesus and Zinchenko. 

Liverpool, meanwhile, have sold Sadio Mane, the first key signing of Klopp’s reign, and remained consistent to the point of being their best players in the second half of last season. 

All of a sudden, both sides’ look different to when this rivalry truly kicked off, midway through the 17/18 season when Liverpool took City’s unbeaten record and then knocked them out of the Champions League. Mane, Lovren, Can and Wijnaldum have left Liverpool, while City have eased out Aguero, Otamendi, Fernandinho, Sterling, and Sane. None of that is drastic change, but it’s a significant turnover nonetheless. 

Both sides have managed their subtle overhauls very well to now, but can both repeat the trick this season? If they can, it will once again be a shootout between both for the title. 

Liverpool’s task might be more difficult, as Mane was more central to their success last season than Sterling was to City’s. 

3. Squad depth 

If there was an area Liverpool’s squad has had an edge on City’s in recent seasons, it’s depth at goalkeeper. Alisson and Ederson are nigh-inseparable, but Caoimhín Kelleher has proven to be a better deputy than Claudio Bravo or, as we saw in the FA Cup semi-final last season, Zack Steffen.

City couldn’t keep Gavin Bazunu and so have addressed the problem by recruiting the excellent Stefan Ortega from the Bundesliga, so that slight gain might now be lost to Liverpool. As if to accentuate the point, Alisson and Kelleher are injured for today’s Community Shield, so the over-the-hill Adrian will play.  

Neither squad are lacking depth in many areas, aside from possibly at full-back. Liverpool don’t have many alternatives to Trent Alexander-Arnold: Joe Gomez deputised there last season but is a centre-back, while Calvin Ramsay, signed from Aberdeen, hasn’t made a pre-season appearance. 

City, having allowed Zinchenko to go, look a little bit light at left-back, though are pressing to remedy that by signing Marc Cucurella from Brighton. It’s probably only a matter of time before that happens, but if it doesn’t, City might need to go shopping.