The Premier League is starting to come to a very gradual conclusion, but that doesn’t mean all of the excitement has come to an end just yet. There’s still a lot to be decided over the course of the next few weeks, and that should actively excite football fans from around the world. As we know the majority of supporters look towards the title race as being one of the most exciting aspects of the season, and that’s no different this time around.
Manchester City and Liverpool have been waging war for the majority of the campaign, and we mean that in the most literal way possible. They’ve been far and away the best teams in the division, and it’s not even close. From the talent they’ve got in their ranks to what they’ve actually been able to produce on the pitch, words can’t quite do justice to just how close it’s been between the two teams.
A legendary club
We now know that the race is going to be taken down to the final day, courtesy of Liverpool’s late surge yesterday on Tyneside. They were able to overcome adversity in the form of Rafa Benitez’s Newcastle side, winning 3-2 to return to the top of the table. As such that has put the pressure directly back onto the shoulders of Pep Guardiola’s City team, who will be going head to head with Leicester City on Monday Night Football. They’ve had to wait all weekend long to get their shot, and you could argue that’s going to increase their nerves. Then again, we haven’t seen them slip up all too much over the last few months.
Manchester City have had one of the very best domestic seasons we’ve ever seen in English football, winning the League Cup with an FA Cup final being on the horizon. Their Champions League defeat at the hands of Tottenham was certainly hard to take, but to be honest, we shouldn’t be taking away from what they’ve been able to accomplish outside of Europe.
On the cusp
Guardiola has inherited a fantastic team which is always going to leave his success on a weighted scale, but he still had to get them to play as a unit. We’d say that he’s done so pretty masterfully since the start of the season, but in equal measure, the players deserve a round of applause too. They call the Premier League the toughest league in the world for a reason, because it’s so hard to win the title once let alone in consecutive years. City are on the verge of accomplishing that, but if they don’t, it’ll be interesting to see how history views them. Will they be seen as massive failures, or will they be viewed as a great team that were simply beaten to the punch by another great team?
The bookmakers seem to believe that they’ll get themselves over the finish line ahead of the Reds, as they gear up for the first of three cup finals (well, you know what we mean).