Santos Barbosa on the left and Pablo Zabaleta on the right.

When the two sides did touch down they went into a long midfield, almost like a 3-4-3, which was a tactical attempt to get the two goalkeepers forward early as their man-based defending allowed them to create two very threatening attack areas.

Liverpool created three in total, with Suarez and Sturridge combining well to beat Bafetimbi Gomis and send the Spaniard spinning on his right foot.

In one of the rare occasions we saw Liverpool take their attacking play seriously, Suarez ran at Gomis and set up Suarez, who then made no mistake to head past the goalkeeper.

It was one of those rare bright, dangerous and clinical moments where the Reds looked more or less unstoppable, but they were a very one-sided match and did not look like having a decisive victory.

This is what makes Liverpool so dangerous on the counter-attack and Liverpool are certainly one of the most creative teams in Europe and Liverpool’s performance certainly demonstrated what the English side have going for them.

Pep Guardiola’s defensive system at Manchester City is very often reliant on a strong man in the centre that prevents forward passage of play, so this strategy has been very successful at times: Chelsea have been very much their own version of it.

In fact, it has been so effective that Arsenal have been forced to play very narrow in their 4-4-2 for their first two games and it has given Chelsea the space and time they needed to push up against defenders such as Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain and Eden Hazard.

They can then play the ball forward quickly to Coutinho and Suarez who will then go inside with Yaya Touré, who can drift inside, or cut across and go through the middle. Their players have great size and balance, but it is important to note that the central midfielders are often in close proximity to the centre-circle players that are not the strikers as they are very good at keeping a wide player like Touré pinned to the wing.

It is something City players are used to playing and Guardiola’s sides often seem to play with a very compact shape: either very deep or quite narrow.

This looks similar to Bayern Munich’s pressing system in the Bundesliga, which they created in the Champions League semi-final against PSG by playing this very specific way.