So I decided a while ago that I was rooting for Liverpool to win the Premier League. It's a little late for this post, since I wanted to publish it when Manchester City was still in with a chance of winning four competitions, but more important things came up. But all the same, and regardless of the fact that City's still best-placed to win the league, I'm not rooting for them.
It took me a while to decide this. Rooting for Liverpool is hard both because of #bantz with friends who support them, and because of former friends who I don't want to see happy. And beyond that, in my formative football fan years it was entertaining to watch their haplessness (although they did win seven trophies in those years, including that famous comeback against Milan in the Champions League final). A team that sported Emile Heskey, Bruno Cheyrou and Djimi Traore wasn't exactly a team you wanted to hang your hopes on.
But they quietly went and turned good. Their Wikipedia page reminds me that they placed second in 2008-09 and scored their highest points total, as well as the "unexpected" title near-miss in 2013-14 that I vaguely remember. It was "near" in large part because of Luis Suarez's goals; but it ended up being a "miss" because of Steven Gerrard's slip at a crucial point (as the Guardian's football writers have been reminding us of constantly these last few months).
And the talk the last few seasons, since Jürgen Klopp took over from Brendan Rodgers and introduced his heavy-metal-inspired gegenpressing tactics, has been of how much better they've been. Last season's hurricane of goals from Mohamed Salah and charge to the Champions League final against Real Madrid turned them into possibly the most exciting team in England, and this season they've been even better, with a rock-solid defense anchored by Virgil van Dijk backing up their attacking threat.
Now, hang on - I said they were the most exciting team last year, and yet... wasn't that the season that Manchester City won their most recent title with a record number of points, goals, wins, consecutive wins and a nauseatingly long list of other records?
Yes, it was.
I have even less connection, positive or negative, to Manchester City than I do to Liverpool, which might be why I find it so hard to get excited about them. Though in my defense I don't think anyone on Football Weekly or any of the other (non-City-supporting) podcasts or outlets was that inspired by them.
This isn't to take away from that achievement, or the other titles that they've won since Abu Dhabi bought them. Those previous title wins both came on the last day of the season, and there was a certain pleasure last season in seeing just how dominant they could be. Would anybody be able to stop them? In the end, yes and no - Liverpool and Manchester United both managed to beat them in the league, but neither result stopped City ending the season with 100 points (and United placed second with 19 points fewer, at 81).
On the other hand, I think it's about enough out of them for now. Sure, if they win this season they'll be the first team to defend their title in about a decade, and for a while they were poised to win a historic quadruple, which no team has managed. Achievements like that aren't bad, but...
It just doesn't feel hard, seeing them win all the time. Sometimes when playing a video game, such as FIFA (to pull out an example at complete random), you've had enough of slogging up the divisions with Southend United to win the league, European Cup and FA Cup, and you take control of Barcelona or City, set the difficulty to easy and see if you can manage an unbeaten season. That's how it's felt watching Manchester City this season: like they're playing on easy and seeing how many points they can rack up.
Contrast it to Arsenal's Invincible season of 2003-04, when they won the league by not losing a single game. I'm not going to pretend that Arsenal came out of nowhere that season to perform a Leicester-type miracle - but they weren't able to compete with Manchester United or Chelsea financially, for all that they were perennial contenders for the title. You'd have expected United, which had dominated the league in the 90s and wasn't done bestriding English football quite yet, to manage an unbeaten season, but it was the comparative underdog of Arsenal that managed it, which makes it probably one of the greatest sporting triumphs I've ever followed (behind Leicester's title win, of course).
For this season, Liverpool feels more like the Arsenal of that era, and Manchester City the dominating juggernaut. Any game that City goes into, you pretty much expect them to win at a stroll, whereas Liverpool comes with an unpredictable X-factor that could allow them to implode against the likes of West Ham (though that was only a draw, so the implosion could have been much worse).
The other thing that would make a Liverpool win more meaningful is the time since their last title - 1990, before the Premier League even started, when they were still in the First Division of the Football League. It almost coincides with my other bugbear, the fact that no English manager has won the Premier League, though Liverpool's wait has been longer than England's.
Now, all of the above is just my own football romanticism. As of this morning Liverpool's top of the table again, two points ahead of City. But City has played one less game than Liverpool, and if City wins that game against United they'll pass Liverpool again on Wednesday. Both have relatively easy fixtures after that, and shouldn't be expected to drop points, which means if City does win on Wednesday Liverpool could lose out on top spot by a point, having lost one match all season.
And finally, spare a thought for Manchester United. They're set to play kingmakers for the season, because if they beat or draw with their greatest local rival City they effectively hand the title to their greatest rival in terms of achievements, Liverpool. Losing the game effectively crowns City winners, barring catastrophe. Winning the title might have been out of the question for them, given the Mourinho-related chaos of the fall, but playing this specific part in who wins the league is probably going to suck for them.
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