Manchester City and Liverpool have changed what it means to be in a title race

We have been here before. Six games left to go. Two brilliant contenders. Zero margin for error. A Premier League title race that nobody deserves to lose but that only one team can win. It is the 2018-19 run-in all over again. The only difference this time, as mentioned, is that we have been here before.

It is a testament to Manchester City and Liverpool’s era-defining quality that they are setting a scarcely-believable standard for a second time.

The 2018-19 run-in was an extraordinary climax - Liverpool winning their last nine games, City winning their last 14 - and the highest-quality title race that English football’s modern era has seen if judging by the points totals alone. This year’s should be a close second by the same measure. Neither side can match their 2019 tallies in this Covid-affected campaign.

Yet even if City and Liverpool finish a few points short of their totals from three years ago, the quality of their play is no worse for it. It may even be better. Witness the levels that both have reached over the past few months and you will conclude that four years of this rivalry - of each team raising the bar and forcing the other to clear it - has only improved them both.

It has also done something more fundamental too, though. It has changed the nature of what it means to be in this kind of race.

A decade or more ago, it would be possible to scan down a run-in and pick out where one team may slip up and where the other might allow them back in. Those at the very top of a league table were not expected to wipe the floor with those in the middle or even at the bottom. The points totals City and Liverpool now regularly post were deemed impossible.

Nowadays, things could hardly be more different. It is no longer