![](\"http:\/\/arewa.ng\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Barcelona-coach-Ernesto-Valverde-names-\u2018best-manager\u2019-in-world-football.jpg\")
<\/p>\nManchester City picked up four points against Jurgen Klopp\u2019s side in the league this season, to leave themselves in pole position to win the Premier League with two games left.<\/p>\n
Guardiola\u2019s men won 2-1 at the Etihad Stadium and drew 0-0 at Anfield, blowing the chance to take all three points when Riyad Mahrez missed a late penalty.<\/p>\n
It is now understood that Ernesto Valverde and his staff are confident going into the semi-final first leg this week.<\/p>\n
Valverde has spent hours going over 24 carefully selected Liverpool games from this season, but it is their two matches against Guardiola\u2019s City side which he has been paying particular attention to.<\/p>\n
The Barca coach believes the key to nullifying Liverpool\u2019s threat, will be to overcome their pressing.<\/p>\n
At times City resorted to long balls and a source claims it is being considered as \u201cthe last option.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cLiverpool apply very high pressure in the form of six or even seven players.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey want to make you uncomfortable and, if possible, they want to rob the ball back.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur intention is to play as we always do. We want to get the ball at the back and play through their press. But we haven\u2019t ruled out going long if we have to,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
A lot of work has also gone into analysing Liverpool\u2019s front three of Sadio Mane, Mohamed Salah and Roberto Firmino, too, while full-backs Andrew Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold are also players Barca know they have to pin back as much as possible.\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Barcelona are taking inspiration from Pep Guardiola\u2019s tactics against Liverpool in the Premier League this season, as they prepare for Wednesday\u2019s Champions League clash, ESPN reports. Manchester City picked up four points against Jurgen Klopp\u2019s side in the league this season, to leave themselves in pole position to win the Premier League with two games […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108964,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[34,1406],"class_list":["post-112362","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-barcelona","tag-manchester-united"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112362","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=112362"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/112362\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/108964"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=112362"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=112362"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arewa.ng\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=112362"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}