The Blue Beast
Liverpool losing the title after sitting top at Christmas is a stick that the football world seems to enjoy beating the Reds with. History backs this up, too, with a majority of festive table toppers going on to lift the Premier League trophy at the end of the season.
But when making this claim, though, many seem to forget about the team Liverpool have been battling all season. The team that has shoved Liverpool aside from their lofty position to continue the Reds’ wait for a Premier League title.
That team, of course, is Manchester City.
A team that won 18 out of 19 league games in the second half of the season. How many Christmas table toppers have ever had to deal with such a run of form from their title rivals?
Even their fans, with their constant berating of football journalists for correctly pointing out Financial Fair Play misdeeds, have claimed the crown for the spouting of gibberish.
The team, though, are excruciatingly coherent in a way that wild claims of media bias against City never will be.
They are quickly becoming a crushing certainty, something that was only emphasised at Wembley today against Watford. Yes, Watford had a couple of early openings, but the way the Citizens coolly dismantled the Hornets throughout the match was terrifyingly efficient.
In attack, they patiently probed the Watford defence and when the gaps did appear, they sliced through their back line with ease.
Then in defence, they swarmed the Hornets players in a way akin to another kind of yellow and black striped insect. Space was minimised and Watford - who have a fair amount of talent in the likes of Gerard Deulofeu, Roberto Pereyra and Abdoulaye Doucouré - were barely able to forge themselves an opening.
Every time it looked like the ball might just be squirming into enough space for a player to unleash a strike at goal, blue shirts suddenly flocked to quash any clear route to goal.
By the end of the match, the whole Watford team looked empty. They were helpless in being steamrollered by a team that looks like it might be on its way to domination of the club game for the next few years. That is, if Pep Guardiola can shake off his Champions League away leg hoodoo.
As wonderful as City are to watch, however, the result from today’s final was something that epitomised the state of club football at the moment. Earlier in the afternoon, Bayern Munich cruised to a 5-1 victory to seal a successive Bundesliga title. It was a result that saw the winners of the ‘big five leagues’ across Europe in England, Spain, France, Germany and Italy, all top the league for the second year running.
Manchester City are just another example of the polarisation across the top leagues in Europe. Be it with spending power, accumulation of great players and great managers, the top clubs are now utterly dominating. Indeed, had it not been for Liverpool’s superb season, City would have completely run away with the league.
The Reds are still, though, part of that elite group. Part of that group revealed to be plotting a breakaway into a European Super League. In some ways, the thought of such a league is starting to become more appealing after games such as this year’s FA Cup Final.
The comfortable swatting aside of lesser Premier League clubs has become pretty much routine for City now. To call it a formality would be an understatement. The process is closer to the act of breathing - something that is regular, coherent and automatic.
Perhaps there is an argument for taking these hyper-charged clubs, sticking them in a league together and hoping for the return of competitive domestic leagues. As beautiful and enjoyable as the football produced by these top clubs is, the one-sidedness of their games on home soil can become somewhat tedious. Of course, though, that viewpoint does depend on who you support.