Nobody wants there to be too much of a managerial love-in. The treacle was laid on a touch too thickly when, at the end of a pulsating 2-2 draw at the Etihad in 2022, Guardiola high-fived Klopp for all he was worth. On this occasion, the mutual affection was forgivable, as they realised that these confrontations had run out of road. After 22 games, 73 goals and more touchline histrionics than are possible to count, their Premier League chapter is closed. Few spectacles in football call for thankfulness but for this, perhaps, we can make an exception.
There were so many luminous displays to mark the saga’s finale. From Alexis Mac Allister, the master puppeteer in midfield, to Virgil van Dijk, the insuperable titan at the back, Liverpool produced a feast for the senses. City, too, discovered qualities that they are seldom called on to show, with John Stones and Manuel Akanji standing supreme against constant pressure. Klopp must wonder what he has to do to make them fold. The degrees by which he has elevated them are all there in the numbers: Liverpool finished their campaign in 2019 with 97 points, and 92 three years later. Both times City surpassed them on the final day.
“Breathtakingly brilliant,” Gary Lineker called this match. And it was, in its richest interludes, with Liverpool finding ever more intricate ways to carve City open. Wonderment, whenever these two clubs have met for the past eight years, has come almost guaranteed. Take the day in 2018 when Liverpool prevailed 4-3 at Anfield, in a campaign where City became the first Premier League side to amass 100 points. Or City’s 2-1 victory at the Etihad in 2019, when they served early warning of a late-season surge that would be remembered for 14 straight wins.
It has been a wild, intoxicating ride, with these clubs hauling themselves so far clear of the rest that, for long stretches, they might as well have been playing their own private competition. This time, there is an extra piquant ingredient in Mikel Arteta’s free-wheeling, free-scoring Arsenal. When Arsenal were last serial title contenders, Ferguson was having pizza thrown at him in the Old Trafford tunnel by Cesc Fabregas, while Ruud van Nistelrooy had Martin Keown screaming in his face. The compound of those Arsenal and United vintages was moreish, acrid, with fans developing a craving for a flashpoint more toxic than the last.
