Overhauls on hold as fixture squeeze sees has Liverpool and City playing it safe | Jonathan Wilson

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The calendar is too packed, the demands on players too great and, just because there is something almost hypocritical about managers moaning about the number of games they have to play when the fixture list is a direct result of the greed of the clubs they work for, that doesn’t mean their fundamental point is not a valid one.Transition is always difficult, particularly when it involves not only a change of players but of style. Arsenal may have brought in more players than Liverpool this summer, but it would require a particular obtuseness to think that bolstering and finessing a system that already fundamentally works is a source of greater disruption than implementing an almost entirely new style.But transition has been made harder by the fact that time available on the training pitch has been so diminished: little wonder an increasing number of managers are preferring to focus on set plays as a way of maximising the limited opportunity they have to work with their teams.Arsenal went into the weekend six points clear of Manchester City and seven of Liverpool.

The game’s administrators, in expanding competitions, producing ever more content, increasing the demands on elite players, have actively changed how the game is played; it’s fairly evident Guardiola would see that change as being for the worse.Pep Guardiola has tweaked his tactics to get the best out of Erling Haaland. Photograph: Matt West/ShutterstockNever before, not even in the four years when he had Lionel Messi in his side at Barcelona, has Guardiola focused his play so much on one player.

But Slot has acknowledged that he felt other sides had worked his team out by the end of the title-winning campaign and so has attempted something more ambitious than simple rejuvenation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHow that is eventually supposed to look is, frankly, a little unclear but it’s notable that the two wins that followed the run of six defeats in seven games have come after a return to something much closer to last season’s approach (and after selecting an extremely inexperienced side in the Carabao Cup, creating a little space in the calendar by in effect giving up on that competition).The Liverpool XI against Aston Villa last Saturday featured 10 players who were at the club last season, plus Hugo Ekitiké. When they meet at the Etihad Stadium on Sunday, the directness of City’s approach will be a gauge of how committed Guardiola is to his new pragmatism and, if they do try to exploit a vulnerability about which Slot has been open, that will be an indication of whether Liverpool really have stabilised or if these last two wins have been the result of playing sides whose strengths could not disguise their weaknesses.The likelihood is of a Liverpool closely resembling the side of last season, overhaul temporarily paused, versus a Guardiola side playing against type (or at least type as it was in every season up till this one) and trying to exploit the power and pace of their centre-forward, as they did at Arsenal.