1d
1d
OLIVER HOLT: Is this an apparition that we see before us? Is it real? Is
Liverpool-
Manchester City at
Anfield a football match or a ghost-game? Will it remain in the sport's history books or will it be erased when
City's guilty verdicts on 114 charges of financial chicanery meet their punishment sometime in the months ahead? There was a time when any
Premier League clash between these two sides would have been regarded as the best advertisement for the
English game that there could be. Not anymore. This game is being played at a wonderful stadium but it might as well be in a circus tent. It is
not a match. It is a giant and terrible curiosity. The great managers who helped to define this collision between modern giants -
Jurgen Klopp and
Pep Guardiola - are both gone and now this clash stands for something else: it marks the start of a period of slow torture for the top flight in this country‚ a period when we can
not know whether there is any permanence attached to results that involve
City. A period when we will
not know whether we should believe what we see.