Liverpool and Manchester City Battle For Community Shield

The Community Shield is something of a traditional start to the English Premier League season though the actual competitive fixtures won’t begin until next week. The matchup is between the winner of the Premiership and the winner of the FA Cup. In this case, that happens to be the same team–Manchester City–so the rules provide that in this case the Premier League runner up gets involved. So it’ll be Manchester City against Liverpool though not exactly for the highest of stakes.

How ‘not exactly high’ are the stakes? The FA considers this game a ‘Preseason Friendly’ though it does have all of the trappings of a big competition. It’s played at Wembley Stadium and the winner gets a nice silver plate ie: ‘the Community Shield’. The big question handicapping this game concerns the motivation of the teams involved. In other words, how important is it that they win this game? Clearly, at this level of the football world with such heated rivals involved they’d rather win than not. The question then becomes what are they prepared to do to win? From the sound of the team’s managers and other news involving their lineups the answer is ‘not that much’.

There’s a conventional wisdom among the mainstream media and casual fans that this is a chance for Liverpool to get some measure of revenge against the team that beat them out for the Premiership title. Liverpool manager Jurgen Klopp quickly dispels the validity of that with this observation:

“We cannot risk any players. We have to see who will be able to line-up and who will train and who will play.”

That’s a very important question. For Manchester City, there are several players who definitely won’t play and reportedly didn’t travel with the team to Wembley. Aymeric Laporte and Fernandinho are recovering from injuries while Danilo was also absent–he’s been rumored to be possibly heading to Juventus. City’s offensive catalysts striker Sergio Aguero and midfielder Kevin De Bruyne will be available. Claudio Bravo will start in goal for City as Ederson has only recently returned to training following a Summer of international play. Also busy with international competition this Summer were Aguero, Riyad Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus and Nicolas Otamendi. For Liverpool, Sadio Mane will be out as he’s getting a break after AFCON play. Alisson Becker, Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino also played internationally but have returned to training. Klopp said that Salah and Firmino could play but from the sound of it won’t start.

The media in England tries to make the relationship between Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp more rancorous than it really is. According to both men they have a ‘cordial’ relationship. The tabloids tried to get some heat out of Guardiola making an extended metaphor that winning the Champions League is like a ‘lucky spin of the roulette wheel’ but it’s doubtful that it he intended it as a snipe at Liverpool:

“Of course we have to win in Europe because it’s an important tournament and difficult to win. But I am not going to go to the casino and gamble everything I have in my pocket on just seven games. I want to be happy for 11 months – and winning the Premier League makes me happy. Why am I going to wait until February for seven games and put everything on black?”

Not exactly the most nuanced metaphor, but his point is that winning the Premiership is a bigger priority and that he’s not going to risk that simply to win the Champions League. The two managers will snipe back and forth in the press but it’s not a blood feud by any means.

You can expect a spirited though not particularly intense competition on Sunday between Liverpool and Manchester City. Without knowing each manager’s strategy in terms of tactics or lineup picking a winner is difficult. City looks a bit more ‘season ready’ at this stage so they’ll get the lean to win the game with enough goals to push it ‘Over’ the total. Six of the last seven meetings between the sides would have exceeded this total averaging 3.4 goals per contest.

BET MANCHESTER CITY -1/2 -108 OVER LIVERPOOL
BET MANCHESTER CITY/LIVERPOOL OVER 2.5, 3 -108

Get the latest soccer odds and props from all over the world–follow BetOnline.ag on Twitter!