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First let me say that this result means nothing when it comes to the season ahead. Not a thing. It’s completely irrelevant. The last two winners of the Community Shield were Leicester and Arsenal, who both went on to finish eighth. Leicester just weren’t very good and Arsenal spent six months smelling themselves after beating us on pens. The point is, winning this is not any kind of barometer for what lies ahead. That said, it feels great doesn’t it? Beating them is always good, whether there’s points at stake or not. Maybe it laid down a marker but I don’t necessarily think so. City know how good we are and this won’t have told them anything new. Except maybe that the King is dead and long live the King. Sadio was great against City so they’ll have been glad to see the back of him. Nunez showed them that life isn’t going to get any easier. Again though, this doesn’t mean that Nunez is going to be a roaring success or Haaland will be a flop. It’s just first blood to us, that’s all. It feels great though, and while the trophy itself isn’t particularly important, it’s something that Klopp and the lads hadn’t won so it kind of does feel important just for them to complete the set. More than anything though it’s just good seeing a performance like that. It wasn’t flawless and we had lulls during the game, but that happens every time we play them. You can’t boss City for 90 minutes as they’re too good. In total we probably bossed two thirds of this game and the other third was relatively even. It never felt like City were on top at any point. We started the game brilliantly and ended it the same way. That bodes well for the start of the season as it shows we’re pretty sharp despite the shortened pre-season. The starting eleven looked really good and then the subs gave us that extra push in the closing stages. It couldn’t have gone any better could it? The start of the game reminded me a little of the semi final a few months back. This wasn’t as spectacular but we’re still in pre-season so we’re never going to be at the intensity we were playing at in April. The way the game went though was similar. We started fast and were well on top. We dominated the ball and were moving it around well. In the first few minutes Mo hit one into the side netting after dancing his way into the box. I really thought that had gone in at first. Would have been a sensational goal. Robbo missed a good chance too when he arrived at the back stick to meet a Trent cross but headed horribly wide. Bad decision, he should have headed back across goal, either to try and score himself or to square it to a team-mate. Robbo might be the worst finisher I’ve ever seen, which is mad because he’s such a great player. He does the difficult stuff really well but when it comes to goalscoring he couldn’t hit a cow’s arse with a banjo. We had other openings too. Hendo was within a whisker of picking out an unmarked Diaz in the centre but Ederson just got a hand on it to take it away. Diaz was really lively all day and picked up where he left off last season. Mo, on the other hand, did not pick up where he left off. Thankfully. This was the Mo Salah who was the best player on the planet for the first half of last season. He looked fresh, rested and free from the baggage he was carrying around at the back end of last season. In between those two we had Bobby, who got the nod to start ahead of Nunez. No surprise, it made sense to ease Darwin into it from the bench and Klopp loves Bobby in games against City. I don’t really know what to say about his performance. He wasn’t bad but he didn’t really do much to catch the eye. That’s kind of his role though isn’t it? He’s rarely one who really stands out as most of what he does doesn’t catch the eye because a lot of it is off the ball and general dirty work. Klopp judged it perfectly really because as soon as the game got stretched in the second half he introduced Darwin to run in behind them. Bobby doesn’t do that and the difference was huge. That space in behind wasn’t really there in the first half though so Nunez may well not have had anything like the same impact if he’d started. It’s definitely easier coming on for the last half hour than it is doing the hour long shift before the space opens up. Bobby might start next week against Fulham too. In fact I fully expect that to be the case. Go with the tried and trusted for now until Nunez is fully integrated. It’s only a matter of time before Nunez is leading the line though. Anyway, our dominance eventually paid off when Trent fired in the opening goal with the help of a slight deflection off Ake. It was a really good build up and although the finish was a little fortunate it was no more than we deserved as we’d been all over them from the start. City had missed a couple of good chances though. One of them was miles offside but Adrian had to make a save from a powerful Mahrez blast. That was scandalous really. I know they are told not to flag anymore but that was so far offside he was in a different post code. In theory, Adrian could have broken his wrist making a save he should never have had to make. That wasn’t a legitimate chance but Haaland had two opportunities within a few seconds. The first when he held off Robbo and got a shot away as he was falling down. Adrian made a decent save with his feet, but seconds later the ball was whipped back in and Haaland just had to put his head on it, or even his right foot, and it was an almost certain goal. Instead he tried to go with his left foot. It looked awkward as fuck and he ballooned it well over the bar. Shite that. That was a rare foray into our final third though as we were generally comfortable. The goal changed things a little though as our intensity dropped a bit and they were able to keep the ball more than they had been able to. They weren’t doing much with it but I just wanted half time to come so we could regroup and then take back control of the game. It didn’t really happen. The second half started the same way the first had ended, fairly even. Not really anything for us to worry about as we looked fairly comfortable, but all it takes is one moment. Foden coming on concerned me, and not just because it meant we had to now look at his awful face along with Ederson and Haaland. You won’t find three worse faces anywhere than those. Foden isn’t ugly but he’s got the worst little manc face you’ll ever see. The other two are just fucking gruesome. Remember back in the day on telly if it was before the watershed and there were tits or a knob shot in a TV show they’ve have that pixel thing that would blur it out? Can we not have that brought in for City games? But yeah, Foden worried me because he’s always a massive threat against us. City looked more dangerous with him on the field. The other lad was getting a lot of love from the commentary team but Foden was the one who gave City the lift they needed. City’s equaliser was avoidable though. Initially it was ruled out for offside against Foden but that always seemed dubious to me even from the first view of it in real time. Adrian wanted a free-kick too but that was desperation. Yes, he had two hands on the ball but it’s not like Foden kicked it out of his hands. The ball was at Foden’s feet when Adrian challenged him. Nothing wrong with that. I don’t blame Adrian for the goal but what I would say is I don’t think that happens if Alisson is between the sticks. It’s not a knock on Adrian, he is what he is. A decent third choice keeper who is nowhere near as good as Alisson. No shame in that, the big, bearded Brazilian is the best in the world. The drop off between the world’s best and his number three is always going to be significant as third choice keepers aren’t going to be any better than Adrian really. One thing I did notice about that goal was that Trent stopped playing when he saw the flag had gone up. He’s on the line and could have maybe blocked the shot, but he turned his back and stopped playing because he saw the flag up. He’s not even looking when the lad hits the shot. The goal set up a tense finale. I expected it to go to pens because our Community Shield game always do. I also worried that maybe we’d lost the momentum and City would finish stronger. Klopp had made several changes so it was no longer our best line up. Milner had come on at right back, Harvey took Hendo’s spot and Darwin was up top for Bobby. We took control again after we conceded though and it wasn’t long until we were ahead again. Quite how Craig Pawson missed that handball in the first place I have no idea. I can only assume refs know they have the VAR safety net now so they aren’t making decisions. I knew immediately that was a penalty even before seeing the replay. I don’t think the header from Darwin was going in though. It might have been a deceptive camera angle and sometimes those headers back across goal bend inwards, but it looked like it was drifting wide. Doesn’t matter though really, the defender handled it so it’s a pen. City tried to put Mo off by protesting about the decision for ages. Ederson tried to flash his ugly mug in front of Mo to put him off too. Not just put him off the penalty, but put him off his food for a week. No-one wants to eat after seeing that close up. Urgh. Thiago did a great job getting himself in between them, making sure he had his back to Ederson so he didn’t need to look at him. Mo kept his cool and buried the pen to get us ahead again. Klopp then send on Keita for the magnificent Thiago, while Carvalho replaced Diaz. The changes didn’t weaken us as all of the subs made a positive impact. Nunez was a handful from the moment he set foot on the pitch. Within seconds he went through and was denied by Ederson, but he was offside anyway. He went clean through again not long after but couldn’t get enough loft on his attempted dink and it hit Ederson in his ugly grid. He won the pen with the header and also had another header drift just wide. Things happened when he was on the pitch, he looks like one of those players who is going to be on the end of a lot of things. He’s always on the move, always trying to run in behind and he pops up on the end of things. He capped a dream debut with a goal in stoppage time when Mo picked out Robbo on the back post and this time he did the right thing and nodded it back across goal for Darwin to head home. His celebration was pure South American. He was so fired up, I love that. This was a big deal for him as he wants to make his mark quickly, especially because of the fee and the daft amount of attention it attracted. That goal gave the scoreline a more accurate look. The game wasn’t that close, we were comfortably better than them and 3-1 was about right. It should have been 3-2 but Haaland missed an open goal. That was on his strong foot too. No excuse for that it was just woeful. Adrian was at fault there, he made a hash of dealing with a well manufactured effort by Foden. It was a great moment though as our fans were in the middle of chanting for Nunez when Haaland missed, and the chant just got louder after that. It was nice to see Nunez outshine Haaland but both of them are going to score loads this season. They’re quite similar players and they’re both totally different to what ourselves and City have had, so the dynamic of both teams is going to change to some degree. I feel as though we’re better equipped to deal with the change because we evolve every season anyway whereas Guardiola is much more rigid in how he wants his team to play. In the tougher games maybe that’s where City might suffer a little, at least initially, but Haaland will fill his boots against the likes of Bournemouth, Everton and the rest of the dregs. I’ll call it here and now, there will be a game this season against some bum team where Haaland scores five. Probably Everton. What will be interesting is if he picks up one of the regular muscle injuries he’s had each season. If Nunez is missing for us we’ve still got Firmino and Jota to choose from. Take Haaland out and City no longer have Jesus or Sterling. That might cost them. We’ve got a better starting eleven and a better squad. But then we did last season too and they still pipped us to the league. It’ll probably be neck and neck again this season, but I do have a gut feeling we might blow them away early by going on big winning run to start the season. The only weakness I see with us is the occasional wastefulness that has cost us from time to time in games we’ve dominated. The Champions League final being a case in point, although we wasted loads of chances in both domestic finals too. If Nunez can help with that, and if Mo can do what he was doing pre-Afcon then I think we’re in for another memorable campaign. Star man is Mo but Thiago ran him close while he was on. Mo though, fucking hell. I said this on the post match pod but it’s not just that he was doing the things we’ve come to expect from him, he was doing other shit too. Like the whipped right footed cross onto the head of Nunez for the pen. Since when has he had that in his locker? He’s so much more than a goalscorer now. He’s so creative. He played the pass for Trent to open the scoring. He played the cross that Nunez won the pen from and then it was his vision and perfectly flighted ball that allowed Robbo to tee up Nunez for the third. He looks ready. They all do. Roll on next week. Team: Adrian; Alexander-Arnold (Milner), Matip, Van Dijk, Robertson; Fabinho, Henderson (Elliott), Thiago (Keita); Salah(Jones), Firmino (Nunez), Diaz (Carvalho):