Liverpool travel to Manchester City on Sunday in one of the Premier League’s biggest clashes of any season, though with one difference this time. City aren’t fighting for the title.
Manchester City vs Liverpool is a modern Premier League rivalry rather than a classic one.
Their most interesting meeting in the 1990s was on the final day of the 1995-96 season when they drew 2-2 at Maine Road, with City coming from two goals down to level before seemingly settling for a point, not realising they needed all three to avoid relegation.
Their first meeting at the Etihad Stadium in December 2003 was another 2-2, with a 90th-minute equaliser from former Liverpool hero Robbie Fowler securing a point for City, but it still wasn’t really a rivalry. Liverpool were more interested in getting the better of the other half of Manchester.
Since their epic title race in 2018-19, though – when City pipped Liverpool to top spot by an astonishing 98 points to 97 – the two teams have been exceptionally eager to get the better of one another.
Pep Guardiola vs Jürgen Klopp was the clash of the titans everyone looked forward to, but that rivalry came to an end last season when the German left his role at Anfield.
Arne Slot arrived in the summer of 2024 and the hope was that a new rivalry would be born. However, Klopp’s departure also coincided with Man City’s downturn in form, which probably annoyed the former Liverpool boss considerably given his years of going up against Guardiola’s previously relentless juggernaut.
Liverpool eased to a fairly routine 2-0 win at Anfield in December, and ahead of the reverse fixture at the Etihad on Sunday, the Premier League leaders sit 17 points clear of fourth-place City, albeit having played a game more following their 2-2 draw at Aston Villa on Wednesday.
On the same night, City were being dragged around the Santiago Bernabéu by Real Madrid – and Kylian Mbappé in particular – as their elimination from the UEFA Champions League was confirmed following the Frenchman’s hat-trick.
Liverpool haven’t won at the Etihad in the Premier League since Klopp’s first game there as manager, thrashing Manuel Pellegrini’s side 4-1 in November 2015. Since then, it has been a steady stream of draws or City victories.
Heading into this one, though, Liverpool are favourites – only just, but it feels significant. The Opta supercomputer sees them winning on Sunday in 38.7% of its 10,000 simulations, with City handing them only their second league defeat of the season in 35.3% of sims (26% ending in a draw).
Since the start of the 2021-22 campaign, City have not been second favourites in any home game, with the closest percentages in that time prior to this weekend according to the supercomputer being their meeting with Liverpool in April 2022 (City 42.6%, Liverpool 28.6%), which finished 2-2.
There have been recent campaigns when these two have met with Liverpool well off the pace, but with the unfamiliar sight of City being the ones who have fallen behind this season, we wanted to look at just how different their numbers have been.
Man City vs Liverpool Prediction and Preview
Scoring Goals
Man City may not have been as potent as recent seasons, but they are still the second top scorers in the Premier League in 2024-25 heading into Matchday 26. Their comprehensive 4-0 win last Saturday over Newcastle United saw them reach 52 goals after 25 league games, more than Arsenal (51), Tottenham (49) and Chelsea (47), but behind Liverpool (62).
They have taken the second-most shots in the Premier League this season (413), but only have the fourth-highest expected goals (xG) total (46.8), behind Liverpool (59.5), Chelsea (50.1) and Bournemouth (47.8).
It all started so promisingly, too, especially in terms of scoring. Erling Haaland hit 10 goals in the first five Premier League games of the season, and City scored 20 goals in their first nine games when – and this is easily forgotten now – they were top of the table after seven wins and two draws, with one of those stalemates the dramatic late point they snatched from Arsenal.
However, a shock 2-1 defeat at Bournemouth began a spiralling in form that no one anticipated. They went on a four-game losing streak, scoring just twice in that time, part of a wider run of form that saw them win just one of 13 games in all competitions (D3 L9).
They have won five of their last seven in the league, though (D1 L1), scoring 22 goals in that time to boost their numbers a little bit.
Despite that, City are on course to score 79 league goals this season, which would be their fewest in the Premier League since Guardiola arrived, with them managing 80 in his debut campaign in England.
Recent arrival Omar Marmoush’s hat-trick against Newcastle last weekend should be a positive sign of things to come for City, with the Egyptian providing some much-needed help to Haaland.
Liverpool lead the league for goals with 10 more than City. For context, the Reds haven’t outscored City in a league season since the 2012-13 campaign.
Mohamed Salah’s herculean efforts have obviously helped with that. His goals and assists combined have been worth 31 points to Liverpool this season, the most by a player in a Premier League campaign since Jamie Vardy for Leicester City in 2015-16 (32).
Salah has 24 goals and 15 assists in the Premier League this season, sitting just five goal involvements shy of the competition’s record for most in a 38-game campaign.
After his goal and assist in Wednesday’s draw at Villa, Salah became the first player to score and assist in 10 different games in one of Europe’s top five leagues in a season since Lionel Messi in 2014-15 (11 for Barcelona).
Will he add to that on Sunday, or could Haaland and/or Salah’s international teammate Marmoush have the last laugh?
Conceding Goals
Alex Ferguson famously said: “Attack wins you games, defence wins you titles.” It’s an iconic statement, albeit not entirely accurate, as we unveiled earlier this season.
The sentiment stands, though. You must be strong in defence to amass enough points to be in a title race, at least.
City have conceded 35 goals already in the Premier League this season, with nine teams having allowed fewer. And that’s an accurate reflection too, as nine teams have also recorded a lower xG against than City’s 35.1.
Most concerning for City is that they are conceding 1.4 goals per game on average, meaning they are on course to allow 53 by the season’s end. That would be the most they have conceded in a Premier League campaign since 2007-08 (also 53).
Only Arsenal (22) have conceded fewer than Liverpool’s 26 this season, with the Gunners also the only team to have a lower xG against (21.6) than the Reds (24.2).
An interesting aspect of comparing chances conceded between City and Liverpool this season is the quality of them. Liverpool have the joint-lowest xG against per shot in the Premier League (0.09), while City have the joint-highest (0.14). Generally speaking, the chances Guardiola’s side are allowing are likelier to find the net.
In fact, City have faced 11 fewer shots than Liverpool this season (245-256) but have conceded 11.0 xG more (35.1-24.1).
The last time Liverpool conceded fewer goals than City in a season was the year they won the Premier League in 2019-20, and they will be hoping to repeat both feats again this season.
You can see from City and Liverpool’s respective non-penalty rolling xG averages since the start of last season below how City’s was steady from the middle of last season to the early weeks of this, but took an uncharacteristic turn after those initial nine games of 2024-25.
Based on a six-game rolling average, you can see that their xG against caught up and even overtook their xG for over that period, meaning they were allowing better chances per game than they were having themselves. And as the gap between the two metrics during the previous season shows, that was quite the change in form.
Liverpool’s went the other way, to a point this season where their rolling average xG for and against both reached even better levels than they achieved in Klopp’s final campaign.
Difficulty to Beat
If there was one team who seemed closest to unbeatable in recent years, it was Man City.
Emphasis on was.
Since Guardiola’s arrival, the most times City have lost in a Premier League campaign is nine (2019-20), while last season they were defeated just three times. After just 25 league games this term, they have already been beaten seven times.
A lot of this came in the aforementioned period across November and December, when they lost to Bournemouth, Brighton, Tottenham, Liverpool, Manchester United and Aston Villa in a span of just eight games. Their only other league defeat in the eight games since was at Arsenal, a 5-1 humbling at the Emirates Stadium.
Their 3-1 loss in Madrid on Wednesday was City’s 13th defeat of the season across all competitions, which is now the most ever by a Guardiola side in a single campaign in his managerial career.
By contrast, Liverpool have lost just once in their 26 league games, a 1-0 defeat at home to Nottingham Forest back in September. They are unbeaten in their last 22 outings in the league (W15 D7).
Things have been a bit up and down for Liverpool in terms of games lost per season in recent years. They have had remarkable campaigns such as 2018-19, when they lost just once – away to City – and just twice in 2021-22. In both seasons, they got over 90 points but were pipped to the title by City by a single point.
Up until the turn of the year this season, Slot’s side were unbeaten in the EFL Cup and Champions League as well, but they have since suffered three losses; 1-0 to Spurs in the first leg of their EFL Cup semi-final (though Liverpool won the return leg 4-0), 3-2 at PSV in their final league phase game in Champions League with a much-changed side, and a shock 1-0 loss to Plymouth Argyle in the FA Cup with a similarly altered lineup.
Essentially, with most of their key players featuring, Liverpool have only lost once since that Forest defeat over five months ago, and that was in a game they knew they could afford to lose given there was a second leg at home still to come.
All that said, this is still Manchester City vs Liverpool, this is still the Premier League, and anything can happen.
Slot said at his press conference on Thursday: “[I expect] what I always expect from City since Pep is there: a great football team that can play so well. They’ve had maybe one or two months in the seven or eight years he’s there now that weren’t the best, maybe partly because of injuries as well. Injuries come back, they’ve signed three or four players, I can see them coming back already if you look at the result against Newcastle.
“So, what you expect is what everybody expects if you go to the Etihad if you play against City. You have to suffer as well and work really hard to keep them away from your goal because they are so, so good in ball possession. But they face a strong team as well that hasn’t lost for 22 games.”
These games have always felt like they have huge ramifications on the Premier League title race, and this one will be no different. Unfortunately for Guardiola, the best he can hope for is doing his former assistant Mikel Arteta and Arsenal a favour.
The next step for City will be to ensure Champions League qualification and to go again next season, when they will be looking to turn this fixture into one with title tension that includes themselves again.
As for Liverpool, they could take a huge leap towards the title with a win on Sunday. They will be all too aware, though, that regardless of form, winning at the Etihad is far easier said than done.
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