Premier League title race has finally regained its intrigue as Man City falter

As if from nowhere a title race has appeared. Manchester City’s 12-point lead is down to six which means that if Liverpool win their game in hand and if Liverpool win at the Etihad Stadium in April, they will be level on points. City are still in the better position, particularly given they have not lost a league game at home to Liverpool under Pep Guardiola but what had started to look like a procession, quite unexpectedly, has regained a sense of intrigue.

It is an indication of how dominant City had come to appear that this feels surprising. Liverpool, after all, have won 11 of their past 14 Premier League matches. In any previous era, that would have been obvious title-winning form. Drawing at Tottenham and Chelsea and losing by a single goal at Leicester should not be a wobble from which there is no coming back.

That is a wider concern: it is always tempting for English football to congratulate itself because it has not gone the way of some many European leagues and become a monopoly, but it is still troubling if winning the title means having to pick up at least 95 points. That is not the sign of a league that is providing healthy competition on a regular basis. That those are the standards is down in part to the genius of Jürgen Klopp and Guardiola, but also to a broken financial structure.

More immediately, though, what is striking is that the expectation had been that Liverpool would wobble in January and February as Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mané went to the Cup of Nations – not just for the two league games they would miss but because there is always a risk after any tournament of emotional hangover. That the pair faced each other in the final could have heightened that; it took a lot of England’s players until