- Rodri is unbeaten in 60 games and is the heart of Manchester City
- You have to find a way to stop it and mark it might surprise them.
- Is Trent Alexander-Arnold playing mind games with Man City’s trophy-digging? Podcast Everything is beginning
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Marking an opponent was a rarity when I played. He’s virtually non-existent now, but I still think Jurgen Klopp should consider him against Manchester City due to Rodri’s influence.
All the evidence suggests that when Rodri is allowed to direct the game, City do not lose. He is unbeaten in his last 60 games for the club, a mind-boggling statistic.
Given that dominance, I’m surprised no one has worked harder to come up with a plan to stop it. The Spaniard has more touches than anyone in the Premier League and provides the service for Phil Foden, Kevin De Bruyne and Erling Haaland to destroy teams.
Stop Rodri and you can stop City. Evidence suggests that they are less dominant and more vulnerable when he is missing. Rodri is the best holding midfielder in the world. Because? Because he is brilliant in both aspects of the game, defensive and progressive.
He has no weaknesses on the destructive side; Tackling, heading, reading the game, pressing hard: he does it all.
Rodri is unbeaten in his last 60 games for Manchester City. He is phenomenal at attacking and defending.
It is not something common, but I would mark Rodri to try to silence his influence.
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Added to that, he has the technical ability to receive the ball under pressure and retain it. He knows when to pass simple and when to free up creative players.
In the modern era, teams are reluctant to sacrifice the attributes of their own players to stifle an individual, and they may not have the personnel to do so anyway.
I remember that I was once asked to mark Dietmar Hamann and it was a great test of discipline, restricting one’s desire to have the ball to follow it all over the field.
Nullifying Rodri is a tremendously difficult task and Klopp will point to his own team’s firepower to question why he should adapt to the opposition.
Maybe so, but there is so much at stake that I think it would be worth throwing the element of surprise at Pep Guardiola and City and taking them out of their comfort zone.
I also think Liverpool have someone in their ranks who can do the job. Dominik Szoboszlai has the athleticism to try and do it and would help Liverpool get a result.
If Wataru Endo were deployed to push Rodri, it would take him to an area of the field he doesn’t normally play in. So for me it would be Szoboszlai.
I think Dominik Szoboszlai has the athleticism to mark Rodri and that could surprise Pep Guardiola.
Jurgen Klopp is not the type of manager who thinks about stopping City, but he must frustrate his key man.
Pep Guardiola has City on a 20-game unbeaten streak and we have to think about the threat they pose
Danny Murphy’s combined XI for the Klopp-Guardiola era includes six Manchester City players and five Liverpool stars
Realistically, I don’t think Klopp is a manager who thinks about stopping City. He can point to a good home record against Guardiola without delegating anyone to overrule an individual.
My counterargument would be that this is a City team on a 20-match unbeaten run led by a midfield general whose last defeat was over a year ago: 1-0 against Spurs in February 2023. Rodri is City’s catalyst. Nobody on his team is as important as the Spaniard. He needs to stop.