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| Aguero and Sallah |
Pep Guardiola insists Liverpool's Mohamed Salah has lost none of his goal-scoring prowess, but the Manchester city boss claims the Egyptian ought to repeat last season's prodigious feats before he can match Sergio Aguero.
City forward Aguero, the club's all-time record scorer, has opened the new campaign in predictable fashion, scoring 8 times in 10 games already this season.
Liverpool winger Salah has made a more modest start to 2018-19, certainly in comparison to last season's 44-goal campaign, with simply 3 goals to date.
And, whilst Guardiola has absolute confidence that Salah remains a deadly hazard, the city manager believes the Egypt superstar should score prolifically over a length of multiple years to match Aguero's achievements.
"He (Salah) is younger and it was his first year back in England since his time at Chelsea, so we will see within the future," stated Guardiola, talking ahead of city's visit to Liverpool in the premier League on Sunday.
"But a guy who has the quality to score 50 goals in a season always has that quality. but football is all about upand downs.
"Salah remains an awesome player and will score goals in the future. while you are in there scenting goals sometimes this happens.
"Sergio has scored quite a few goals but there have been periods while he didn't score goals.
"What number of years has Sergio scored all those goals, 8 or 9 years? For Salah it was the first one so we can see in seven or eight years."
Some other city forward, Raheem Sterling, have to be involved at Anfield despite Guardiola having left him out of one of the two journeys to Liverpool last season.
Sterling, a former Liverpool player, was given a torrid reception from his former club's supporters who were unimpressed at the manner of his leaving Merseyside.
However Guardiola believes that coping in the face of such adversity is a part of the 23-year-old's learning curve.
"He has played against Liverpool at Anfield before," stated Guardiola. "He failed to begin last season for the first time but that was for a tactical cause.
"I do not consider him differently for this game due to the fact he is a former Liverpool participant. maybe it's affected him before, perhaps it hasn't. I don't know because we have not spoken about it.
"However even if that's happened because he was so young, he has to learn. with a bit of luck he will be here for a long time with us, so he's going to cross many times to Anfield. that's normal.
"He grew up as a player at Liverpool, he has good memories of his career there. Of course Liverpool enthusiasts need him to play bad, and he would not need to play bad, he wants to play good."
Liverpool, over the first months of the season at least, have emerged as the most powerful challengers to city's hopes of retaining the premier League title won in such spectacular fashion last season.
And while Guardiola, diplomatically, name checked the division's other main sides, he did concede that he expected Jurgen Klopp's team to be prime contenders in this season.
"Liverpool are a robust group but so are Chelsea, and Arsenal, Manchester United. Tottenham as well," Guardiola stated.
"But for us, for Manchester city, we need to defend our name, and they may be contenders. Liverpool have commenced so well, they have got the equal points us, but we were waiting for that all along.
"Liverpool have been an excellent group last season and due to the fact that then they have bought some more incredible players to combat against us."
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