Liverpool's depth exposed as Manchester City win 0-3

Liverpool were beaten 3-0 by Manchester City in Liverpool vs Manchester City, and the bigger issue was how quickly their attack lost its shape once the game moved against them. Liverpool were without Alexander Isak, Cody Gakpo and Dominik Szoboszlai, and six of their seven league goals this season had come from that trio. Ryan Gravenberch had already gone off before the three goals went in.

Liverpool's attack without its main scorers

That absence matters because Liverpool had only scored seven league goals this season. Remove the three players who had delivered six of them and the bench suddenly has to carry far more of the load than it looked ready for here.

Manchester City did not need a long spell of pressure to expose that. Liverpool's attack ran into dead ends, and Alisson barely had a save to make before the match tilted after the red card.

Wirtz and Barcola came through the game poorly

Florian Wirtz and Bradley Barcola were the biggest letdowns in the starting XI. They were valued at a combined £239m and neither looked close to justifying that weight in a match where Liverpool needed a lift.

Wirtz has made 6 Premier League appearances and Barcola has 4, so this is not a verdict on tiny exposure. It is a critique of what they offered on the day, and the numbers attached to both players only make that starker. Wirtz's Premier League rating this season is 6.48, while Barcola's is 6.43.

Roy Keane summed up the mood on Sky Sports, quoted by dailymail.com: "They were not smart enough, don’t be letting them off the hook just because they had 10 men."

Liverpool can point to the dismissal, and Lewis Steele described Chris Kavanagh's second yellow for the first foul as the wrong decision. Even so, the performance before that moment left Liverpool with very little to hide behind. Manchester City were sharper, Liverpool were short of ideas, and the 3-0 scoreline matched the gap in execution on the day.