Royal romp: The watershed defeat that set Dublin on the road to greatness
THE YEARS 2017 to 2020 have been spectacular in English top-flight football, and from them has emerged a duel between Liverpool and Manchester City that rewrites Premier League maths.
Two seasons ago, in May 2018, City finished 25 points ahead of Liverpool, whose evisceration of Crystal Palace on Wednesday night reopened a 23-point lead in the 2019-’20 race. This sharp turnaround is not simply a case of Liverpool’s rise and City’s fall. It’s more interesting than that.
This has been a three-year golden age in which even the great rivalries of the past – Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United versus Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal jumps out – cannot match the crazy numbers churned out by two majestic sides.
City will look around their dressing room and ask how such a constellation of talents could ever have fallen 20-plus points behind a club with a 30-year drought of English titles. How Kevin De Bruyne, Sergio Aguero, Raheem Sterling and David Silva came to be buried by the deluge of Liverpool’s brillianceproving stats is an oddity compressed into a remarkably short period.
Great
In the age of Pep Guardiola versus Jurgen Klopp, both are great teams. But this year Liverpool are greater. City have been deprived of a third straight English championship by their own small slippage, but mostly Liverpool’s relentless evolution. In 2018 and then last year City posted 100 and then 98 points to win the league back to back.
They took to the field at Stamford Bridge with a maximum possible points haul in this campaign of 87. Regression, mainly defensive, is undeniable.
More saliently, 25 miles down the motorway, a stronger force has advanced in leaps.
Liverpool’s exhibition against Crystal Palace on Wednesday night was a timely affirmation of their quality. It had everything: sweeping moves, a sweet finish by Mohamed Salah and a rocket from Fabinho that made the point all by itself. Palace were assigned a role by Klopp’s men and there was no escaping it. Their job was to be overwhelmed so the rest of English football could be reminded just how good Liverpool are – and how childish it would be to withhold credit when the trophy was finally theirs.
That 4-0 win displayed Liverpool’s class, ruthlessness, togetherness and talent. It was achieved with purpose and panache. There will be no asterisks. And it spoke loudly of Klopp’s strategic intelligence that he knew such a performance would subdue the club’s enemies.
Blowing away the last whiff of scepticism around the distorted nature of football’s restart saved Klopp and his team from the tedium of having to defend their triumph against external mischief.
Aesthetically, Liverpool and Manchester City have packed more individual talent into their starting XIs than any two rival teams of modern times. No downgrading of Arsenal’s ‘Invincibles’ against Ferguson’s United should ever be permitted.
Over the past three decades there have been countless big face-offs and tight title races. But the numbers this time around describe a giant three-year starburst we have been privileged to see.
In 2017-’18 City shredded the record books. They were the first team to reach 100 points, scored a record 106 times, finished with an unprecedented goal difference of 79, were behind for only 153 minutes all season and posted a record 18-match winning run.
In 2018-’19 they equalled their own record of 32 campaign wins, won their last 14 matches (a first) and took their haul of points over two seasons to 198, holding off Liverpool by a point in a race where the lead changed 32 times.
Dropped
In those two title-winning years City dropped just 30 points from 76 games.
If they thought Liverpool would be broken by that battle, City now know it was the start of a huge power shift.
Thirteen months later, Liverpool have scored 23 consecutive home wins in the league, at one stage held a record 25-point lead, and are on course to surpass City’s historic 100 points.
They are the first side to claim the English crown with more than five games left. Since 1992 the top tier in England has been remarkably democratic – for the top clubs at least. The following teams have finished first or second in that period (most of them multiple times): Manchester United, Aston Villa, Blackburn, Newcastle, Arsenal, Liverpool, Chelsea, Spurs, Leicester and Man City (as ever, apologies for confining this to the Premier League years, which provide a convenient measure).
Those 28 years encapsulate plenty
of two-club ding-dongs: memorably, Ferguson’s United against Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle and the allManchester showdowns of 2012 and 2013.
Triumphalist Liverpool fans might even claim that their rivalry with City is already over, because Guardiola’s men are so far back. This is not how it feels, because the correct context is the three seasons from 2017 to 2020. In that spell both teams have been imperious and posted silly numbers to go with their thrilling football.
Few in the game think City’s ambition will be crushed by the ending of Liverpool’s 30-year wait. The pressure shifts to Anfield to defend its supremacy.
Chelsea are spending big again and spending well. United have located a midfield pairing and a pack of young attackers. But in the club game Liverpool are reigning world, European and English champions. There is nothing ephemeral about that. (© Daily Telegraph, London)