Liverpool’s great hope is that Man City are not only playing Brighton – but themselves

Not just a 39th game in another jurisdiction but a 40th. The Premier League’s fantasy takeover of the world is occuring by default rather than design. The English cleansweep of European competition is its own marketing tool, better than any schema hatched by the creatives at Bogle Bargle Pegarty Trott.

A decade of wilting beneath the weight of continental exotica in the image of Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, the game is once more spinning on an English axis. All four slots in the Champions League and Europa League finals filled by top six clubs, and none of them Manchester City, who sit one win away from retaining the Premier League title this weekend. How’s that for strength in depth?

In terms of tumult the mad opera that is the English game has never seen a period like it. So deep did we dive into the extraordinary realm of possibility the momentous, barely-legal barnburner of a goal scored by Vincent Kompany to restore City’s title lead at the expense of Leicester and Liverpool barely survives as a footnote. Football is the new legal high, the goals as first Liverpool rattled through Barcelona and then Spurs ransacked Amsterdam, releasing through our veins like opiods.

Arsenal almost let us down in reaching the Europa League final conventionally in Valencia. At least Chelsea conformed to the insane template by dragging out their semi-final against Eintracht Frankfurt to penalties. There were a few hearts pumping as Eden Hazard stepped up to dispatch the deciding kick, maybe his last at Stamford Bridge in a Chelsea shirt.

Advantage Liverpool?

So we arrive at the final weekend of the regular season mixing relief as well as anticipation. We are all ready for a lie down, a spell in recovery. Watching this game can be hostile to sapiens. It ages us. The championship lead has changed hands 28 times already this season. City’s trip to Brighton is no guarantee there won’t be a 29th. The tension and apprehension in their play at home to Leicester has not gone away. City are not only playing the opposition, they are playing against themselves. They cannot escape the circumstances, the sense of what might be lost if they make a mistake.

In this, Pep Guardiola was surely right when he pointed to the free hits Liverpool have enjoyed in the run-in, always behind in terms of points potential and always playing first. Though there was much to lose, the sense of their destiny being out of their hands has had a liberating quality and Liverpool have prospered as a result, largely tension free. City still need to win to guarantee outcomes. You can imagine how fraught the afternoon might become at the Amex the longer they go without scoring.

Then again Wolves at home is no gimme. At some point you imagine something has to give in the hitherto indefatigable legs of Liverpool. Jurgen Klopp has had them wound up for months, building to a mighty peak. Can he sustain it for one last push in the league, especially after the emotionally draining scenes of Tuesday at Anfield. They would not be human were they to keep going again and again.

Pure romance

The big Scouse revival under Klopp has resurrected a great English institution in a way few thought possible in the age of sovereign-backed clubs. Klopp has harnessed the community in the manner of Bill Shankly, plugging into a culture and a society with a unique sense of its own identity. That fist-pumping victory salute in front of the Kop has become a defining ritual of home games weaving the affable German ever deeper into the Fabric of the place.

Klopp talks about the matches, the victories, the experience all meaning more as if the club is connected to the city in a way other teams are not. This is, of course, pure romance but if it ekes an extra five per cent out of the team’s performance you can see the sense in it, not that Klopp is expressing his view from a cynical standpoint. He is luxuriating in a deeply fulfilling experience rich in meaning which allows him to celebrate even if Liverpool end the season empty handed. Hence his reference to a “beautiful death”.

Over in Manchester, Guardiola is engaged in much the same process but from a different starting point. He is building not resurrecting, expanding into a new space not recovering a realm his team once ruled. This sense of project is fuel for him and his magnificent team, helping them to keep at it in the face of Liverpool’s indefatigable challenge.

A 14th win on the spin at Brighton ends the argument in City’s favour. Victory would give City a total of 98 points. Should Liverpool follow suit against Wolves they would finish a point adrift on 97, a historic high for the team coming second and a bigger number than Manchester United ever hit in any of their 13 Premier League triumphs. Then again, 97 might yet immortalise an achievement 29 years after Liverpool last stood atop that perch.