Man City must beware familiar Jurgen Klopp trap ahead of Liverpool FC test

For several years now, Manchester City's match with Liverpool has become a crucial contest in the race for the Premier League title. What Pep Guardiola has admitted to be the toughest challenge in English football has taken a different feel this year considering the Reds' poor start to the season, and Jurgen Klopp's team are languishing in 10th position having lost two of their opening eight fixtures.

Defeats to Manchester United and Arsenal will be of great concern for Klopp as he prepares to mastermind a victory over his old foe. However, City must be wary of a familiar trap that the German manager likes to set ahead of matches against teams who are in close competition with his side.

Klopp would love nothing more than to be underdogs in every fixture possible. But it is difficult to pull this off when you spend just under £96m on player transfers in the summer window.

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Instead, his tact in pre-match interviews before these tests aims at being self-deprecating about his team's chances. Just take the United game as an example.

The Liverpool man praised six United players for having 'real quality' despite them having lost their opening two matches at that stage of the season while having watched his side put 13 goals past them in the last three previous meetings. Before Arsenal last weekend, Klopp reeled off his admiration for the Gunners' talents Bukayo Saka, Gabriel Martinelli and Martin Odegaard. If you did not know better you would find it hard to believe that his team reached the Champions League final and won two domestic cups less than six months ago.

Klopp has already started his old reliable technique ahead of City's trip to Anfield on Sunday. Earlier this week, he