Regardless of who lift the trophy tomorrow, both Liverpool and Manchester City have done an incredible job this season and neither of them would tomorrow lift the trophy without truly deservingit.
So it all comes down to this. One day, one trophy, one dream. Two teams…
Manchester City and Liverpool go into the final Premier League game of the season with both sides capable of lifting the trophy. For City, it would represent their second title in a row - the first side to defend their crown since the Sir Alex Ferguson years. For the Reds, it would end an excruciating 29-year wait for their first top-flight title.
Both deserve it but there can be only one winner.
Beat Brighton and Pep Guardiola will lead City to a total of 198 points over the last two seasons. Incredible. Three points against Wolves at home will see Jurgen Klopp’s Reds finish with a tally of 97 points and there’s a very real chance they still won’t have the trophy in their hands. Unprecedented.
Welcome to the greatest Premier League title race we’ve ever seen. Enjoy the ride.
August 2018. Liverpool kick off the season with three wins from three and on the same day the Merseysiders edge out Brighton 1-0 at Anfield, City drop two points at Wolves – the first time they’d not won away from home in the league since February.
Seven points from nine is hardly a terrible start but it means that Guardiola’s team begin September outside of the top four. Liverpool: nine points. Tottenham: nine points. Chelsea: nine points. Watford: nine points. It’s only the third time in English top-flight history that four teams have boasted a 100%-win record after three games.
Perfection was already becoming a requirement to be at the top.
Liverpool’s faultless start continues in September with the club registering five wins from five for only the third time in their history. A sixth would follow against Southampton. The Carabao Cup exit at home to Chelsea represents the first stumble, something that the holders, Manchester City, do not experience away to Oxford United as Phil Foden scores his first-ever goal for the club, aged just 18 years and 120 days. Prospect.
City reach the top of the table at the end of September when Liverpool finally drop points in the league, away at Chelsea. An 89th-minute belter from Daniel Sturridge at least keeps them unbeaten, taking the former Chelsea and City striker to 50 for Liverpool in the Premier League, the seventh player to do it after Robbie Fowler, Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen, Fernando Torres, Luis Suarez and Dirk Kuyt. A certain Egyptian would also join the list this season. More on that later.
October arrives with City and Liverpool locked together at the top of the table and facing off against each other. Having been treated to three blockbuster clashes between the two sides between January and April 2018, you could smell the anticipation in the Anfield air. The nation expected. Bring on another classic. Instead, the two teams served up a dud, with the combined total of 13 shots the second lowest number in any Premier League game in 2018-19. Dreary.
It’s the last of those 13 shots that proved the most significant, however. A reckless challenge by Virgil van Dijk on Leroy Sane in the penalty area gave City the chance to record a league win at Anfield for the first time since 2003. The responsibility is handed to a man who, of players to take 10 or more spot-kicks, has the second worst penalty conversion rate in Premier League history. Up steps Riyad Mahrez. Row Z.
A chastened Mahrez scores in City’s next game, however, a 5-0 humbling of Burnley at the Etihad Stadium. That win for City, coupled with a narrow 1-0 Liverpool victory at Huddersfield means that both teams have won eight of their opening 10 games. The new ‘big two’ of the Premier League were flexing their muscles and speeding off into the distance.
Mahrez ends October by scoring the winner away at Tottenham, a result that keeps them level with Liverpool. Neil Warnock’s Cardiff would then become the first away team to score a league goal at Anfield since February – shame for the Bluebirds, and Man City, that Klopp’s men smashed home four themselves.
As Halloween arrives, Chelsea are still a terrifying prospect in Liverpool and City’s rear-view mirror. Unbeaten like the top two and only two points behind them, but, as winter approaches, it’s Klopp and Guardiola’s sides who look to have the killer instinct needed for a sustained title challenge.
November 11, 2018. Etihad Stadium. Manchester City vs Manchester United. In 2017-18 United had been the nearest challengers to Guardiola’s team, albeit 19 points behind, but the new season had seen Jose Mourinho unravel as he engaged in open warfare with Paul Pogba. Even so, the Red Devils headed to east Manchester having taken 10 points from their last four league games and fresh from a comeback win at Juventus in the Champions League.
Ultimately, it meant nothing.
The gulf between the sides is clear, and never more so than with Ilkay Gundogan’s goal to make it 3-1. City play 44 passes in the build-up to the German finding the net, making it the most intricate goal in the Premier League for over three years. Humbling.
Enter Divock Origi. Sixteen months without so much as stepping onto a Premier League pitch, the Belgian comes off the bench in the Merseyside derby with the score at 0-0. What happens next? A moment to savour for Origi, and one to forget for Jordan Pickford. The Everton goalkeeper, unchallenged, fumbles a hideously-shanked Van Dijk shot against his own crossbar in injury time. Guess who’s there to tap home the rebound? Cue scenes of triumphant chaos. Even Klopp’s on the pitch.
Liverpool go on to win seven league games in December, more than they’ve ever achieved before in a single month, dishing out thrashings to Newcastle, Arsenal and Bournemouth. The most significant victory, though, is the 3-1 triumph over Manchester United - a result that ensures Mourinho is binned off shortly afterwards as United go into meltdown. Top of the table? Check. Rivals embarrassed? Check. A win to put Jose out of work? Check. It’s not a bad time to be a Liverpool fan.
And guess what? A City wobble is on the way.
The unbeaten record falls apart in an away game at Chelsea as Guardiola’s team dominate in west London only for the hosts to score with their first shot. Game over. Liverpool now have a one-point advantage at the top but no one is expecting the semi-implosion from City that’s about to follow over Christmas.
A once-in-a-career thunderbolt of a volley from Andros Townsend helps Crystal Palace become the only team to beat City at the Etihad Stadium in the league this season, with Liverpool, after an impressive 2-0 win over Wolves, taking the No.1 spot at Christmas. Another City defeat follows straight after, this time to Leicester on Boxing Day - remarkably, the champions have now thrown away nine points in four games and are seven behind their rivals for the title.
Into 2019 and a blockbuster of a clash between the two teams at the top. A Liverpool win would put them 10 clear and surely then they’d have a few fingers, if not a whole hand, on the trophy. City, though, had other ideas.
In a Premier League match brimming with tension, Sergio Aguero opens the scoring to make it seven goals in seven league matches against the Reds. His finish from a vanishingly-tight angle is one of the images of the season, an open-mouthed Alisson contemplating as he concedes just his ninth goal of the season. But that wasn’t the end of the story.
Liverpool’s equaliser comes after typically superb work from both of their full-backs - Trent Alexander-Arnold plays a raking pass over to Andy Robertson, who goes on to assist Roberto Firmino. City, though, are not to be denied as Sane’s winner rewards an intense display that sees Bernardo Silva cover 13.7 kilometres - the most by a single player in a Premier League game in 2018-19. Mileage.
Guardiola’s men were back from the brink.
Even so, Liverpool still possessed a four-point lead at the top after the defeat at the Etihad Stadium and by the end of January, after City’s shock loss to Newcastle, they had a golden chance to re-establish a seven-point buffer. At an icy, swirling Anfield they couldn’t manage it, however, as they were held 1-1 by Leicester, managing only 10 shots all game.
There would be no more City slip-ups.
February belonged to one man: Aguero. The Argentine, who hadn’t always been a Guardiola favourite, was becoming his manager’s go-to man. In the space of a week he scores his 10th and 11th Premier League hat-tricks against Arsenal and Chelsea to equal Alan Shearer’s record. He would later go on to reach 20 league goals for the fifth season in a row. The only other player to do that? Thierry Henry. Esteemed company indeed.
While City were swatting big-six rivals like flies, Liverpool went to Old Trafford and Goodison Park in late February and early March. Difficult fixtures in any season but when you literally can’t blink in this most unforgiving of title chases, they were huge.
The wheels were falling off the Ole Gunnar Solskjaer revival at United but in a game they dominated in terms of possession, Klopp’s men only managed one shot on target. Two points dropped. A big chance wasted.
Talking of shots, City’s game at Bournemouth in March sees the hosts stifled as they fail to register a single effort at goal - the first time in Premier League history that’s ever happened to a team playing at home. That same weekend sees Liverpool drop two more points, this time at Everton. Their last shot on target comes in the 54th minute and Mohamed Salah goes three league games without a goal for the first time since he signed for the Reds.
Even worse for Klopp, his side drops into second for the first time since early December. It's where Liverpool will stay this time too, unless City come unstuck somewhere, anywhere, with nine games left. Alas, Guardiola’s relentless machine just keeps on winning, and winning, and winning some more.
It wasn’t quite so rosy in the Champions League, however.
After an epic battle at the Etihad against Tottenham, Raheem Sterling slots home a dramatic stoppage-time winner and races away to celebrate. City have, remarkably, done it. 5-4 on aggregate, through to the semis. Or so they thought. VAR spoils the party this time. Spurs go through.
It represents the cruellest of blows and one that threatens to ruin them psychologically. But with Liverpool praying for a City slip, Guardiola and his team trudge back to their domestic duties and keep churning out the wins.
A victory away at Palace on April 14, such a problematic fixture in 2017-18, means that City have won away in London five times in one season, yet another top-flight record. The same day Salah scores a goal-of-the-season contender as Liverpool decisively put Chelsea to the sword, in Klopp’s 200th match in charge. The Egyptian King would then become the fastest to 50 Premier League goals for Liverpool with his breakaway run and finish against Southampton.
City’s pair of away days at Old Trafford and Turf Moor at the end of April were being chalked up as the Reds’ most realistic hope of seeing their title rivals finally drop points. They win both games, without conceding, allowing their opponents a combined total of just one shot on target in 180 minutes of football. Tight at the back, deadly going forwards, City reach 157 goals for the season during the derby, setting a new all-time record for a top-flight English club across all competitions. History-makers.
Still, the flawless, relentless, brutal title charge from both teams continued. Liverpool thrash Huddersfield 5-0 at Anfield on April 26, the first time there had been five goals from African players for a team in a Premier League match and, for Naby Keita, there’s also the honour of scoring the Reds’ fastest ever goal in the competition, after 15 seconds.
As May dawned, England had two top-flight teams with more than 90 points for the first time ever. City out in front but Liverpool continuing to plug away. And in what seemed to be the game that had seen them finally run out of steam, up popped that man Origi to seal a 3-2 away win at Newcastle. Never give up.
The Belgian then elevates his status further as he nets twice against Barcelona in a truly unforgettable Champions League night at Anfield. The Reds defy logic to smash four unanswered goals past Barcelona, booking a place in the Madrid final. All hail Divock Origi. The forgotten man who was becoming a crucial piece in one of the most memorable seasons in the club’s long history.
May 6, just 24 hours before Liverpool's astonishing comeback in Europe, and this was it. The Reds' last realistic hope of City being stopped. Step forward Brendan Rodgers. The man who should have delivered the Reds the title in 2014 had the chance to give them a huge leg up to one now. City knew they simply could not afford to drop points against Leicester and yet it looked like they would do exactly that as the game headed towards the final 20 minutes.
Then, on 69:43 club captain Vincent Kompany unleashes one of the greatest, and simultaneously unlikely, shots in Premier League history to leave Kasper Schmeichel sprawling, edging City to the top of the table yet again. It was the veteran centre-back’s first shot on target from outside the box since 2013 and the 37th time he tried to score from long range in the Premier League. It was the first time he had succeeded. It was perfection.
And so here we are. The final day and where the story comes to an end. Man City 95 points. Liverpool 94.
Whatever happens on Sunday, Pep, Jurgen, thank you. Sincerely. You’ve given us the greatest title race of all-time.
By Duncan Alexander & Stephen Darwin
