Ruthless Man City remind Liverpool and Premier League what they’re capable of with thumping win

Man City 4-0 Liverpool: Pep Guardiola’s side put on a show to make sure Jurgen Klopp’s Reds’ first game as league winners ended in a heavy defeat

Liverpool will write this off the morning after the 30 years before, and having waited so long for a domestic league title, you have to say fair enough. Yet for Manchester City, this thrashing of the newly-crowned champions is not meaningless. The most striking aspect of the evening was the sheer sloppiness of Jurgen Klopp’s players, but the second-most was the relish with which their closest challengers dispatched each of their four goals.

This emphatic victory - secured by a Raheem Sterling brace, a Kevin De Bruyne penalty, what could be a breakthrough moment for Phil Foden - reduced Liverpool’s unassailable lead at the top of the table to a mere 20 points, but it also lent credence to the argument held by some that, on their day, City are potentially the better side.

That day has only come every so often for City this season, while days like these have been practically unprecedented for Liverpool. That, ultimately, has been the difference between the two and the reason why Guardiola and his players were forced to give their visitors an amusingly half-hearted guard of honour as they walked onto the Etihad pitch. Yet after looking off the pace for so much of the campaign, City looked more than up to speed.

Before kick-off and an amusingly half-hearted guard of honour, it was difficult not to wonder what this game might have been. Last season’s corresponding fixture came too early to feel decisive, while this game came too late to decide anything. Even so, and even without a crowd, the pace and intensity of the play was not dissimilar from their most competitive meetings and the opening half hour was proof, as if it were needed, that these are the best two sides in the country by some distance.

Liverpool actually began well, arguably shading the opening exchanges, and if Mohamed Salah had found the inside of the post rather than striking it while the scoreline was still 0-0 then they would probably have avoided what followed. But almost immediately after Joe Gomez tangled clumsily with Sterling to concede the penalty, the balance of play emphatically shifted City’s way.

Gomez and Sterling infamously confronted each other in November’s reverse fixture, leading to a separate contretemps in the St George’s Park canteen while away on international duty and a public apology from Sterling. You wondered whether that was in Sterling’s mind as Gomez began grabbing hold of his torso tightly inside the area, but by the time he had let go, there was no doubt it was a foul. De Bruyne stepped up, as he has done since assuming penalty-taking duties in February, and scored his fourth successive spot-kick.

Sterling would get the better of Gomez again for the second, at which point Klopp presumably decided that his centre-half would be replaced at half time. Foden’s dribbling, combined with De Bruyne’s off-the-ball running, stretched Liverpool’s defence enough for Sterling to take up possession inside the area with enough time to step away from Gomez’s limp challenge then tuck the ball through his legs and into the bottom left-hand corner.

But it was the third goal which demonstrated that, for this evening at least, one team was playing at a far greater level than the other. One of Andy Robertson’s most remarkable attributes is his consistency, but this was comfortably the most haphazard performance of his Liverpool career, and its worst moment came when he overcommitted to closing down Foden, allowing the youngster to spin, play a brilliant first-time one-two with De Bruyne and then lift the ball over a helpless Alisson. It was a sublime goal and evidence that Foden is ready to be trusted against even the very best of opponents.

It was not even half time and a rout - maybe even one greater than the 5-0 thrashing handed out to a 10-man Liverpool on this ground three years ago - felt possible. In the end, there would only be one more, with Sterling embarrassing Robertson once more by stepping around his sloppy challenge and finishing off a rapier-like City break. His only disappointment at the end of the evening would be missing out on a hat-trick against his former club. And mercifully for Liverpool, Riyad Mahrez saw a late strike ruled by VAR for handball in the build-up and they avoided the ignominy of a fifth.

Little attention will be paid to this result when the story of this season is told to future generations on Merseyside, or anywhere else for that matter. It was an irrelevance in terms of what happens between now and the end of the campaign. City, though, will take both solace from beating the best team in the country in such an authoritative manner, and belief that they have struck the first blow in next season’s race.