Premier League title race: Is Liverpool and Manchester City 'winning out' now likely?

Both title challengers are meeting an extraordinarily high standard, meaning this title race could be won by the finest of margins

“What we want to do is collect as many points as possible,” Jürgen Klopp said, but he had to check something. “It’s 85 now, four games to play? That means 97?” That’s right Jürgen. “Good. Let’s try that.”

97 points. More than either of Jose Mourinho’s title-winning sides during his first spell at Chelsea, four more than Antonio Conte’s Chelsea of two years ago, six more than Sir Alex Ferguson’s best 38-game season at Manchester United.

It would, in fact, be more than 525 of the 526 teams to have completed a full Premier League season have previously managed. The problem? That 526th team in that list is last year’s Manchester City and this year, the defending champions can still get 98.

There is still plenty of time for things to change in this exhilarating Premier League title race but, given the unforgiving standard being set, the possibility that both City and Liverpool win all their remaining fixtures seems ever likelier - and especially so after Sunday’s events.

City’s win at Crystal Palace came at a canter, with a resurgent Kevin de Bruyne pulling the strings. It was their ninth straight victory in the league, the third in succession in which they did not need to shift out of second gear.

Pep Guardiola believes his side cannot afford to drop a single point. Their run-in is the more difficult one – with two games against members of the top six – but next Saturday’s against Tottenham will be coloured by the Champions League meeting on Wednesday night, while Manchester United look well out-of-sorts.

And Liverpool will be comfortable pre-match favourites in all four of their remaining fixtures having come through their final ‘top six’ game. The demons of that defeat to Chelsea in 2014 have been exorcised too, by beating the same opponent by the same scoreline.

It is therefore not hard to imagine both teams ‘winning out’ from here, which would make for a strange and somewhat anticlimactic finish, devoid of the slip-ups and psychodramas that we associate with the very best title races.

It would mean that City defend their crown, of course, two short of their record-breaking 100-point total of last year. Guardiola’s side would at least have come close to that mark while under far greater and far more consistent pressure than they experienced last year.

Liverpool, meanwhile, would finish as the best runners-up in Premier League history by a margin of eight points. They would also be the first English top-flight of all time to lose just one game and still fail to win the title.

If it does come to that and both maintain this devastating pace, the temptation will be to look back to across the many wins and search for where it was all lost. City’s poor Christmas would be pored over. Liverpool would look to those draws to Leicester and West Ham.

“It’s all bullshit,” was Klopp’s frank assessment of that thinking on Sunday. “Only weak people and idiots bring something like this up... If [97 points] is enough, perfect. If not, we cannot change it. And we didn’t lose it here or there.” Fair enough.

And yet, without wanting to be outed as an ‘idiot’, it is harder to dismiss the significance of those games where these two contenders came against each other – when both had the opportunity to directly deprive the other of points.

If they finish one or two points apart, the goalless draw at Anfield in October and in the 2-1 City win at the Etihad in January will be where this race was won and lost.

If City fall short, their memories will return to Riyad Mahrez’s late penalty at Anfield, awarded at 0-0 after an uncharacteristically rash decision by Virgil van Dijk, yet fired over the crossbar by a foot or so.

If Liverpool miss out, that sole defeat so far at the Etihad in January will weigh heavily on their minds. Indeed, the 11.7mm between City going behind and a John Stones goal-line clearance will have been the difference.

And say both win all of their remaining games. In that case, that single defeat to City will have prevented Liverpool from becoming champions, centurions and invincibles. The third-best team in the all-time Premier League table will be second-best in the only one which counts.

It is a cliché that sport, at the elite level, is decided by the fine margins. And yet increasingly, it appears that the finest title race in the Premier League’s history could be won and lost by a matter of millimetres.