Pep Guardiola once said: ‘Those three for Liverpool are good… they scare me, they are so dangerous.’
The Manchester City manager, on the way to a record-breaking 100-point Premier League season in 2018, was pacing up and down a near-empty dressing room chatting to his analyst Carles Planchart and right-hand man Domenec Torrent. It felt like a therapy session.
We have become accustomed to Guardiola’s nervous tics in the last few months and — albeit he has never been a calm soul — the best coach of his generation was shown quaking in his boots ahead of a meeting with Liverpool in that season.