Salah, Mane, Firmino: Pep Guardiola was scared to face Liverpool's front three in 2017/18 | OneFootball

Mohamed Salah, Sadio Mane and Roberto Firmino are one of the greatest front threes that the Premier League has ever seen.

While Firmino might have fizzled out and been usurped by Diogo Jota in recent seasons, the Brazilian formed part of an unstoppable Liverpool triumvirate during his peak years at Anfield.

It’s hard to imagine a world in which the Reds would have reached back-to-back Champions League finals and won the Premier League title if their star-studded trio hadn’t been leading the line.

The brilliance of Mane, Salah and Firmino

With Firmino pinging passes like a playmaker-striker hybrid to the prolific Mane and Salah, you could rest assured that Liverpool would always give you bang for your bucks at the business end of the pitch.

In fact, the Firmino-Mane-Salah dynamic was so potent at its best that even Pep Guardiola, who is widely regarded as one of the greatest tactical minds in history, felt scared about playing against them.

While that might sound a bit extreme at first glance, we can safely make that statement considering the Manchester City boss said it himself in Manchester City’s ‘All or Nothing’ documentary.

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Guardiola vs Liverpool’s front three

The programme followed the Citizens’ near-perfect 2017/18 season, but even a year that reaped a record-breaking 100 points still saw plenty of heartache at the hands of Liverpool’s front three.

And the moment that Guardiola expressed his fear about facing said trio came in footage of the City boss preparing to face the Merseyside club in the Champions League quarter-finals.

Having lost their unbeaten record in the Premier League to Liverpool in a 4-3 defeat with Mane, Salah and Firmino all scoring, Guardiola was wary to avoid a repeat performance in Europe.

Guardiola scared to face Mane, Salah and Firmino

The result? A fascinating conversation with assistants Carles Planchart and Domenec Torrent that you can peruse in its entirety down below.

Guardiola: “The forwards of Liverpool are good.”

Planchart: “Sorry?”

Guardiola: “Those three up front.”

Planchart: “Yes Pep, but only it’s just them.”

Guardiola: “They scare me. They’re dangerous, I mean it. I have a feeling that Salah will play [as a] striker. Salah will play as number nine and Firmino will move towards the wing. He comes here and Salah goes forward. Our wing-back can’t cover their wing-backs.”

Planchart: “I notice when they don’t have space, they suffer a lot, like today against Crystal Palace. But we are a team that risks a lot.”

Torrent: “I watched our game yesterday when we went there [to Anfield] and lost. They played on another level. If you want to beat them you have to work to do it. If we are at our best, we are better than Liverpool.”

Fascinating footage of Guardiola feeling scared

You know you’re doing something right when one of the greatest managers of all time is feeling that fearful, and you can see it in Guardiola’s eyes when you watch the full footage right here:

Just look at the effect that Mane, Salah and Firmino had on people in their primes.

Mane, Salah and Firmino thrived again

Besides, Guardiola was right to be concerned because even the lessons learned from the league defeat proved futile as Liverpool dumped City out of Europe with an emphatic 5-1 win on aggregate.

The Citizens ultimately had the last laugh as they won the Premier League title and Liverpool lost to Real Madrid in Kiev, but they were still burnt by the Reds’ front three in a season where almost nothing went wrong.

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In other words, City might have had the better team overall, but you only have to look at Guardiola’s thoughts to see that Liverpool were simply peerless when it came to their front three.