There was half an hour of this torturous afternoon still remaining for Arne Slot when the “oles” started and not too long after that the Manchester City supporters had trained their sights on Liverpool’s beleaguered manager.
Chants of “You’re getting sacked in the morning” reverberated around the Etihad Stadium as the locals revelled in taunting Slot as City cruised into an eighth successive FA Cup semi-final and, in doing so, subjected Liverpool to their 15th defeat of the season. It was the heaviest of the Dutchman’s reign.
Plenty of Liverpool fans had long headed for the exits by then. The first droves of supporters began to leave once Erling Haaland scored his third and City’s fourth in the 57th minute amid waves and cries of “cheerio” from their City counterparts, who were performing their celebratory “Poznan” dance.
By the end, there was barely a quarter of the 8,000-strong travelling support still in the ground. Patience was already wearing thin with sections of the fanbase and this capitulation will only add fuel to the fire for the anti-Slot brigade.
The shadow cast over the manager by the availability of Liverpool legend Xabi Alonso, whose name was sung by some fans as they departed, grows that little bit bigger on days like this.
Steven Gerrard, the former Liverpool captain, had suggested on The Overlap in the lead-up to the game that, once it gets to this stage, it is “very difficult” to win Liverpool fans back around.
With the Champions League representing the last shot at silverware this term, it increasingly feels like it is going to take something dramatic – perhaps akin to 2005 when Liverpool won the European Cup against all expectations – to change opinions from here.
To achieve that, though, Liverpool are going to have to be far better against Paris St-Germain in the French capital on Wednesday, in the first leg of their quarter-final, than they were during a 20-minute period either side of half-time when City scored four times.
Slot is nothing if not honest and seemed as incredulous as anyone about some of the failures that contributed to that capitulation. After the opening 35 minutes there had been little between the teams and Liverpool probably should have led but for a bad Mohamed Salah miss.
The speed with which Liverpool folded, even by the standards of a season in which they have had some real lows, was still shocking and left Slot questioning the effort, concentration and fighting spirit of his players.
“If you simply look at the goals, there I see runs that are not being followed, I see crosses that are not being blocked, I see duels in front of goal that are not won,” he said. “Every single time we forget to block a cross, we forget to defend in front of goal, we forget to follow a runner, every single time it’s a goal.”
Luis Enrique, the PSG coach, will pick over this and present a long list of vulnerabilities for his players to exploit and it is not helping Slot that two players who have provided the foundations for so much of Liverpool’s success over the past eight years are struggling so badly. Salah and Virgil van Dijk, to say the least, had nightmare afternoons.
Would this game have turned out differently had Salah not missed the kind of chance in the 15th minute that he would have buried for fun last season? Having got the better of Abdukodir Khusanov from Giorgi Mamardashvili’s long ball upfield, the Egypt striker had just James Trafford to beat but delayed his shot too long and allowed the rapid City defender to make a crucial, last-ditch interception.
The contrast with Haaland was marked. The Norway striker has not had the easiest few months, scoring just five goals in 20 matches coming into this, but his 12th hat-trick for City felt like a marked return to form and will do his confidence the world of good. Stale Solbakken, the Norway coach, took the decision to rest Haaland for the first of his country’s two friendly matches and already the player looks to be benefiting.
Haaland’s emphatic finishing stood in stark comparison to Salah’s total lack of conviction in front of goal, embodied by his penalty miss with Liverpool 4-0 down shortly after ballooning a horrible shot high and wide from another inviting position.
“It is clear that not everything throughout a long season will go your way, but it shows character and mentality that he comes back in this fashion,” Pep Lijnders, Pep Guardiola’s assistant, said of Haaland. “He is not only lovely but he is a machine to work with.”
Van Dijk had an even worse day than Salah. Having given away the penalty Haaland converted by clumsily tripping Nico O’Reilly, he was then far too slow to close down the space before Antoine Semenyo crossed for Haaland to head City into a 2-0 half-time lead.
Lijnders called it an “insane” goal but, as much as there was to like from a City perspective, it was poor from Liverpool. Ibrahima Konaté, Van Dijk’s centre-back partner, did not put Haaland under nearly enough pressure for the header, as brilliantly taken as it was.
Things did not improve for Liverpool after the interval. Van Dijk allowed Semenyo to run in behind him to meet Rayan Cherki’s pass to score City’s third although, in truth, it should never have got to that point. The goal stemmed from Liverpool gifting the ball to Marc Guéhi 50 yards from goal and Slot’s side being cut apart far too easily from the moment they surrendered possession.
