PEP KOPS BIG KANING

Harry’s double blows open title race. Is it now advantage Klopp?

PUNDITS, bookmakers, every manager in the Premier League, Manchester City followers, Tom, Dick and Harry, even Liverpool loyalists. They thought it was all over.

Well, it isn’t now.

We have a title race, we have a finale to look forward to, we have another epic tussle to relish.

Thanks, ironically, to the brilliance of Harry Kane, Pep Guardiola and Manchester City will soon be feeling the heat of Liverpool’s breath on their necks.

Jurgen Klopp’s men will surely dispose of Leeds United on Wednesday and would then be just three points behind City, having played the same number of matches. Liverpool come

Thanks to the

brilliance of Harry Kane, Pep and

City will soon be feeling the heat of Liverpool’s breath on

their necks

to the Etihad in early April. Considering this was City’s first Premier League loss in well over three months, it seems an extremely odd thing to say…but it feels as though the momentum is with Liverpool.

Imperious

And it was Kane, seemingly Citybound last summer and at his most imperious here, who gave Liverpool’s cause another positive nudge.

This was all about the remodelled Kane, the self-styled hybrid of striker and playmaker.

Drop deep, collect possession, look for the through ball, as he did on several occasions, most notably in the build-up to the opening goal.

But he still has the keenest eye for an opening, the sharpest of penalty-box brains, the quickest of finishing feet, as typified by his first second-half goal.

And he still has a muscular scoring presence, giving Spurs the dramatic winner in added time after Riyad Mahrez had scored a second equaliser from the spot following VAR picking up a Cristian Romero handball.

This was a masterclass from Kane and a memorable triumph for Antonio Conte.

When he was not busy lighting and then trying to extinguish fires, Conte must have enjoyed preparing for the challenge of Guardiola and this formidable City side.

Defending narrow, Spurs invited the opposition full-backs to advance and when possession was won, it was played into the areas vacated by Kyle Walker and Joao Cancelo.

That is exactly how the breakthrough was manufactured, Kane’s first-time pass releasing Heung-min Son into vast expanses of space. He handed the goalscoring honour to Dejan Kulusevski, who made an extremely impressive first Premier League start.

In their current form, Liverpool’s attacking ensemble will fancy their chances when they come to the Etihad, that is for sure.

And the truth is there will be the

odd game when City do not perform to their usual standards.

This was certainly one of them. For long spells, a midfield of Rodri, Ilkay Gundogan and Kevin De Bruyne looked surprisingly laborious.

Sloppiness

If anything, Gundogan, captain for the evening and scorer of the first equaliser after Hugo Lloris had coughed up a Raheem Sterling cross, was the sprightliest of the trio.

Despite their sloppiness, City still dominated possession, while Spurs loaded the defensive numbers and invited City to break them down.

Yet Tottenham held out with some degree of comfort – and threatened to score on almost every occasion they mounted a counter-attack.

Only a tight VAR offside call and an Ederson smother denied Kane a second before he headed the clincher after Mahrez’s spot-kick seemed to have salvaged a point for City.

Spurs celebrated a famous double over Guardiola’s side and, down the road, Klopp probably raised a glass of something to Antonio and Harry.