Pep Guardiola turned to face Anfield's imposing Main Stand and started orchestrating the jubilant Liverpool fans. The Manchester City manager had been waving his arms in the air seconds earlier and now he was egging on the delighted home fans.
It felt like City - and Guardiola - at Anfield in microcosm and came at the end of a passage of play that probably sums up their misfortune at this stadium.
There will be plenty who still think City have a mental block when it comes to playing here in front of fans and the team selection was perhaps a little cautious to face a side so low on confidence and whose manager had declared them out of the title race after eight games.
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This looked like the day City would go to Anfield and finally win in front of fans for the first time in 2003. Instead, that wait goes on. Next season it will be 20 years and the Blues' only win here in that time was the 4-1 thrashing in front of an empty stadium in February 2021. It counts, but as Guardiola has said, this place is very different when it's full.
City certainly through their shackles off in a second half that was entertaining as the first was dull and in a 60-second spell it looked like their luck was turning in the red half of Merseyside.
When Mohamed Salah sprinted on to Diogo Jota's pass early in the second half in an all-too-familiar Liverpool counter the outcome looked obvious. Salah raced away from Nathan Ake but with Anfield already celebrating his left-footed finish dribbled the wrong side of the post.
Referee Anthony Taylor gave a goal-kick but replays showed it had been a sensational save from Ederson, getting enough of a hand on the ball to divert it marginally the wrong side of the post.
With that stroke of luck, City took full advantage. Or so it seemed. Within a minute of the restart, the players dressed in the garish third kit were celebrating in front of a delirious away end. Phil Foden, taunted by the Kop in the first half, relishing in scoring the goal. The narrative was perfect, but it's never that easy for City here.
Just as the City players began to make their way back to their own half, Anthony Taylor signalled he was off to the monitor. Despite the protestations of Rodri and Foden, the goal was disallowed after Haaland had grabbed Fabinho's shirt in the build-up. Cue Guardiola's sarcasm.
It had echoes of the way he waved two fingers to the Main Stand in the November 2019 defeat here on a day when decisions again went against City, especially for Fabinho's opener, when they should have had a penalty at the other end for a Trent Alexander-Arnold handball.
His anger was less visible when the City bus was attacked on its way to the ground in April 2018, but it all plays into his frustration when he visits Anfield. This passage of play almost summed up City's inability to win when the hostility is at its most intense.
As soon as Foden's goal was chalked off the rest felt inevitable. City were enjoying a spell of pressure when the goal came, the result of a poor tactical set-up and an individual mistake.
Guardiola at least survived to see the whole game, with Jurgen Klopp sent off for his reaction to a tussle between Bernardo Silva and Salah. The touchline can be as entertaining as the pitch sometimes in these games, but for City it was for the wrong reasons on Sunday. Again.
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