Sunday was nothing new. OK, fine. Some of it was quite new.
Four-time defending champions Manchester City are now 11 points back of first place in the Premier League. Liverpool hadn’t beaten them since before the 2022 World Cup, and hadn’t beaten them this definitively since before they’d hired Jurgen Klopp in 2015 and maybe even before City were purchased by the Abu Dhabi royal family in 2008.
Sure, there were some heftier scorelines during the Klopp years, but City created only one above-average chance across the 90 minutes, and that only came from a once-in-a-season Virgil van Dijk giveaway after Liverpool were already leading 2-0. If we look only at the balance of chances created and conceded, City under Pep Guardiola have rarely, if ever, been dominated as badly as they were at Anfield.
Of course, Guardiola and City are used to getting dominated by one Liverpool player in particular: Mohamed Salah. The Egypt international scored or assisted for the sixth straight game against City — and this time he did both. It’s not just City, either. Only Alan Shearer has more goals (60) against the Premier League’s Big Six than Salah (57), and only Shearer (88) and Ryan Giggs (80) have notched more goals+assists than Salah’s 78.
If you had to choose one “clutch” player in the Premier League from the past decade, Salah would have to be it. But what about the rest of the league? Are there certain players who perform best in the most decisive moments? And if there are, does it tell us anything about what’s likely to happen in the future?