Three of Manchester City's five previous Premier League triumphs have gone right to the wire, where margins are so fine the title battle can be settled by a single man in a single moment.
Sergio Aguero of course set the standard in 2011-12 with surely the most iconic goal of the Premier League era, defeating QPR at the death and clinching a first City championship in 44 years.
Then, in 2018-19, it was Vincent Kompany's turn. Although the departing City captain made only 17 league appearances that year, he will forever be associated with the title win after his thunderous strike secured a vital late-season victory over Leicester City.
"Where do you want your statue, Vincent Kompany?" asked Sky Sports' Gary Neville. Both Aguero and Kompany – and those celebrations – have since been committed to steel structures outside the Etihad Stadium.
The City hero was perhaps not quite so clear-cut in 2013-14, when Liverpool's collapse took centre stage, but Yaya Toure's 20 goals from midfield kept his side in touch. While City spent only 15 days of the season at the summit, the win that put them there in the final week perhaps provided the defining image of the champions' campaign, as Toure charged through the Aston Villa defence to score a goal that BBC Sport's Alan Shearer considered "like watching a 15-year-old against under-12s".
Three City legends have had seasons to call their own. Kevin De Bruyne, until now, had not.
De Bruyne was the PFA Players' Player of the Year in consecutive years, but the 2019-20 campaign in which he equalled Thierry Henry's 20-assist, single-season record ended with Liverpool on top. The 2020-21 season played out largely without fans and ultimately without a serious challenge to City, robbing their leading man of his platform.
Consistent excellence had for so long characterised the midfielder's career rather than any particular peak.
Now, however, 2021-22 might be remembered as the De Bruyne season – a most unexpected conclusion given how the campaign started, as perhaps his worst in a City shirt.
'Difficult physically and mentally'
The player of the year he may have been, but De Bruyne's 2020-21 season did not finish in the manner he would have wished.
The former Chelsea man lasted only an hour of City's Champions League final defeat to the Blues last May, suffering facial fractures that impacted his preparation for Euro 2020. De Bruyne found form again at the finals, only to hobble out of Belgium's last-16 win over Portugal with an ankle issue.
Although De Bruyne played in the next round, as Belgium lost to Italy, he continued to be hampered by the injury at the start of this season, appearing in City's Premier League opener but then not again for almost four weeks.
"It's been a bit difficult physically and mentally," the 30-year-old told the MIDMID podcast in November, revealing he had played through "some serious pain".
"It's going to be a little more difficult this year than usual," De Bruyne suggested, and that seemed a fair prediction.
The City superstar, who also missed time with COVID-19, made his 10th league appearance of the season in a 1-0 home win over Wolves on December 11. At that stage, he had scored only twice in the competition and failed to provide a single assist – averaging a goal involvement every 246 minutes.
The only comparable De Bruyne season in a City shirt was in 2018-19, when two knee ligament injuries meant his 10th league appearance did not come until early February. Over 465 minutes up to that point, he scored once.
That is the sole other example of De Bruyne not contributing an assist through his first 10 league outings in a season for City; in fact, he had tallied at least four assists and six goal involvements by that point in each of his other five campaigns prior to 2021-22.
A week before De Bruyne's podcast appearance last year, Belgium coach Roberto Martinez was also asked to address his star man's form, acknowledging the "scrutiny" he faced while underperforming in a team as talented as City's.
"I'm not worried at all," Martinez said. "We feel that his best football is coming back."
De Bruyne added: "I just needed more time than expected."
'Now he scores a lot'
De Bruyne's 11th game of this campaign was very different. In a 7-0 City win over Leeds United, the team's talisman doubled his seasonal tally by scoring twice, including a thunderous 25-yard drive for his second.
"For the whole team, it's a booster," De Bruyne told NBC Sports – although that surely applied more to the two-goal star than his team-mates, with City moving four points clear at the top of the table with the victory.
"There's been a lot happening this year, a little bit out of my control, so the only thing I can do is try to work hard and come back as quick as possible," he said.
It was clearly a turning point for De Bruyne, who has scored 13 goals and provided seven assists in 19 matches from the Leeds game onwards. A goal involvement every 81 minutes over this period just beats his single-season best from 2019-20 (85 minutes per goal involvement).
Yet De Bruyne's role has altered in the past two years. He will not match his outstanding 33 goal involvements from the year Liverpool won the title, but 15 goals already represent a career high with one game still to play on Sunday.
The reason for that change perhaps has more to do with De Bruyne's City team-mates than the player himself.
In 2019-20, six of De Bruyne's 20 assists were for record goalscorer Aguero – more than for any other player. Of course, Aguero has since departed.
The retired striker was City's leading marksman in six of his 10 league campaigns in Manchester, including each of his first four playing alongside De Bruyne.
With Aguero gone and Erling Haaland not arriving until next term, City needed someone to fill the void in front of goal. De Bruyne, whether used in midfield or attack, has done that in the second half of the season.
Despite the slow start, City's top scorer has scored with 20.3 per cent of his shots in 2021-22; his previous high, in his debut 2015-16 season, saw a shot conversion rate of 14.3 per cent.
"I like it a lot," Pep Guardiola said in April after De Bruyne had netted four in four games – including two against Manchester United and one against Liverpool.
"He is not just a player to make assists – now he scores a lot of goals. I've said to him many times, 'I know you enjoy making a lot of assists, for you and your team-mates, but you have to score goals to reach another stage'. Now he is doing that, a lot of goals and chances."
'We have to move on'
De Bruyne has either scored or assisted in 13 of his past 19 games, but he saved his best performances for when it mattered most – at least in the league.
There were suspicions City's season might fall apart when Real Madrid's remarkable semi-final recovery eliminated Guardiola's side from the Champions League at the start of May. With Liverpool in hot pursuit in the Premier League, the leaders were afforded little time to regroup as they headed straight into matches against Newcastle United at home and Wolves away.
"We are going to play against Newcastle thinking about [the Madrid defeat], for sure," said Guardiola in an enthralling news conference, revealing two days before the Newcastle match: "We didn't speak. No words can help what all of us feel. It's just a question of time."
Time, and Tottenham drawing at Liverpool, as it turned out.
A rare slip-up at Anfield on the eve of City's game against Newcastle eased the pressure on the champions. Then De Bruyne got to work.
Briefly restored to his 2019-20 vintage, De Bruyne attempted only a single shot at the Etihad but created six chances in a 5-0 win – his most in a single game this season – including an assist for Rodri's goal.
That performance prompted Jamie Carragher in the Sky Sports studio to declare De Bruyne "the greatest player to ever play for Manchester City", "the best midfield player in the world right now" and "the best player in the Premier League for the past three or four years".
Yet better was still to come at Wolves, where City became the first team in English top-flight history to win five consecutive league games by a margin of at least three goals. De Bruyne alone outscored Wolves by three, netting four in a 5-1 victory.
The first hat-trick of his City career was completed inside 24 minutes – the third-fastest in Premier League history – to blow away a Wolves team who had briefly threatened to cause their visitors some problems.
"It should have been five, to be honest," De Bruyne told Sky Sports, before conversation turned back to the Madrid match.
"It's very difficult to explain because it was just a mad five minutes," he said. "It's not that we played bad or something, it was just five minutes that you can't explain as a player. I don't know what happened. I was out of control on the bench anyway, so you feel a little bit in shock. It's not nice and the feeling is still not nice.
"But you need to move on. We're trying now to win the title and whatever happened unfortunately happened. We have to move on."
The Wolves display would have been fresh in Carragher's mind on Monday when he named De Bruyne his personal player of the season. Whether established individual end-of-season honours beckon for De Bruyne is another matter, though. He was nominated for the official Premier League prize, but many such awards are voted on well in advance of the final weeks of the campaign – before De Bruyne had done his best work.
Mohamed Salah is the FWA Footballer of the Year; he has scored three goals in his past 10 games – fewer than De Bruyne managed on one night in Wolverhampton.
A Premier League title, defined by his clutch performances, would not be a bad consolation.
Gravenberch ready to show off Liverpool form ‘to the world’, says Gakpo
Liverpool’s Cody Gakpo expressed his pride in seeing compatriot Ryan Gravenberch show off his qualities ‘to the whole world’ after a fine start to the Premier League season.
Though the Netherlands pair did not become teammates at Liverpool until late summer of 2023, Gakpo knew well Gravenberch’s talents from their respective Eredivisie spells with PSV Eindhoven and Ajax.
Now in his second season at Anfield, Gravenberch has drawn widespread plaudits for his form in a new deeper-lying midfield role under new head coach Arne Slot, having largely been used as a substitute under Jurgen Klopp.
Gravenberch is the only midfielder in Europe's big-five leagues to both make 30+ tackles (30) and 30+ interceptions (33) in all competitions this season, and Gakpo insisted that his Netherlands team-mate can continue to go from strength to strength, starting against Southampton this Sunday.
“We [the Dutchmen at Liverpool] knew Ryan already from the Eredivisie when he played at Ajax, and I think everybody knew already that he is this good,” Gakpo recently told Men in Blazers.
“After that, he made a move to Bayern Munich, and maybe he didn’t play that much over there, but still everybody in Holland knew how good he could be when he was playing.
“And I think maybe the manager [Slot] also knew this. At the beginning of the season, he put him in a slightly different position, but he gave him the confidence to play there.
“Ryan showed his quality in that position, grabbed his chance as well and turned out to be a good match. He is playing outstandingly for us this season.
“I’m very happy that we can see Ryan, as we Dutchmen already knew, but now he can show it to the whole world. I’m very proud of him.”
Southampton, meanwhile, welcome the Reds to St. Mary’s on the back of a 2-0 defeat to Wolves ahead of the international break, leaving them bottom of the table after 11 games of the season.
The Saints are the lowest scorers in the Premier League this season (seven), while only Crystal Palace (5.1%) have a lower shot conversion rate than Russell Martin’s side (6.2%). Just 30.1% of Southampton’s shots have been on target this term (34/113), a league-low ratio.
However, the Southampton head coach is relishing the opportunity of facing Liverpool, with his players performing well against the likes of Arsenal and Manchester City already this term.
"I'm really excited about Sunday. We're playing the best team in the country at the moment, on their current form and what they have been doing with their manager, built on an incredible foundation from the previous manager, so I'm really looking forward to it,” Martin said.
"I think we showed the guys the Premier League table last season and how much it changed by the end and by the end of December. But it's honestly such an exciting month.
"People talk about the difficulty of the game and every competition we face in the next four or five games, but it's what we all worked so hard for. We should be excited about the challenge.
“I think teams have shown in the last few weeks that you can pick up big results against big teams, good opposition, and we are going to have to. Our level of performance against teams at the top end of the table has been good on the whole."
PLAYERS TO WATCH
Southampton – Mateus Fernandes
Fernandes has become a mainstay in the Southampton team, starting the last eight Premier League games in a row, and has been one of Martin’s standout performers in a lacklustre start to the campaign.
In the Saints’ 2-0 defeat to Wolves last time out, the Portuguese contributed a team-high expected goals (xG) tally of 0.22 from his three shots, while only Yukinari Sugawara (10) and Flynn Downes (12) have created more chances in the top-flight than Fernandes (eight) this season.
Liverpool – Mohamed Salah
Salah has both scored and assisted in the same match 35 times in the Premier League (including four already this term), just one shy of Wayne Rooney’s record of 36 games with both a goal and an assist in the competition. The Egyptian has been directly involved in 11 goals (seven goals, four assists) in 11 Premier League appearances against Southampton.
He has also been directly involved in 67% of Liverpool’s Premier League goals this season (14/21 – eight goals, six assists), the highest ratio by a player for any side in the division in 2024-25. Indeed, only Matt Le Tissier for Southampton in 1993-94 (69% - 34/49) has scored or assisted a higher proportion of a side’s goals in a single season in the competition.
MATCH PREDICTION: LIVERPOOL WIN
Liverpool have won nine of their 11 Premier League games under new head coach Slot (D1 L1). A win over Southampton will see the Dutchman become the joint-fastest manager to reach 10 wins from the start of a Premier League career (12 games), alongside Guus Hiddink in May 2009 and Carlo Ancelotti in November 2009 (both with Chelsea).
The Reds’ last Premier League game against the Saints was a 4-4 away draw in May 2023 – they conceded as many goals in that game as they had in their previous six visits to St Mary’s combined.
Southampton have won just one of their last 14 Premier League games against Liverpool (D3 L10), a 1-0 home victory in January 2021.
This will also be the first Premier League match between the side starting the day bottom of the table and the side starting the day top since April 2023, and Southampton’s 3-3 draw away to Arsenal. The league leaders are unbeaten in 14 such matches (W12 D2) since Wolves won 2-1 against Manchester United in February 2011.
However, Southampton have only lost one of their last eight Premier League home games against sides starting the day at the summit (W2 D5) and are unbeaten in their last four (W2 D2 – including a 1-0 win over Liverpool in January 2021) since a 0-1 defeat to Man City in May 2018.
But Martin’s side have lost nine of their 11 Premier League games this season (W1 D1). Only seven sides in English top-flight history have reached 10 defeats in 12 or fewer matches from the start of a campaign, with all seven going on to be relegated.
OPTA WIN PROBABILITY
Southampton – 9.7%
Draw – 12.6%
Liverpool – 77.7%
Taylor proud of 'gritty' Man City display in Hammarby victory
Gareth Taylor was pleased with how his Manchester City players handled the atmosphere against Hammarby to secure their passage into the Champions League quarter-finals.
Khadija Shaw opened the scoring in the 31st minute before Ellen Wangerheim restored parity shortly after the interval with a finish from close range.
But Shaw continued her fine start to the campaign, scoring the winner to become City's all-time top scorer in the competition, surpassing Georgia Stanway and Janine Beckie (both six).
The result saw City make it to the last eight of the competition for the first time since 2021, though the encounter was far from comfortable at the Tele2 Arena on Thursday.
Hammarby ended the contest with an expected goals (xG) total of 2.15 compared to the visitors' 1.07, despite both sides having 14 shots throughout the match.
However, City maintained their unbeaten record against Swedish sides in the competitor (W6), and Taylor was proud of his side's "gritty" display in Stockholm.
“I’m really pleased. It was about qualification for us tonight," Taylor said.
"There were a couple of ways we could do it. Obviously, we knew a point was enough, but I don’t think the players were thinking that way.
“It was a really gritty performance on a really difficult on this pitch. It probably doesn’t look like that for the viewers at home watching it.
"But it was a really lively surface and we worked so hard.
“I felt there were some areas we could control the play better. I have to give credit to Hammarby, they were really aggressive.
"The referee was on our side a little bit in the first half and maybe not in the second.
“I’m really pleased and proud of the players, they really dug in tonight. You come away from a hostile environment with a win.”
Guardiola agrees two-year contract extension with Man City
Pep Guardiola will be Manchester City manager for at least two more seasons after 2024-25, after he signed a two-year contract extension on Thursday.
The 53-year-old was coming to the end of his City deal, which was due to expire at the end of the current campaign, but he has opted to remain at the Etihad Stadium.
The deal itself will take Guardiola's tenure at the club to over a decade, making him City's longest-serving manager since Les McDowall in 1963.
There had been suggestions that he may leave at the end of the season following the announcement that director of football Txiki Begiristain was on his way out.
Guardiola was strongly linked with the England job after Gareth Southgate resigned in the wake of their Euro 2024 final defeat, but the Football Association appointed Thomas Tuchel last month.
“Manchester City means so much to me," Guardiola said. “This is my ninth season here; we have experienced so many amazing times together. I have a really special feeling for this football club.
“That is why I am so happy to be staying for another two more seasons.
“Thank you to everyone for continuing to trust and support me – The Owner, The Chairman Khaldoon, Ferran, Txiki, the players and, of course, the fans… everyone connected to Manchester City. It has always been an honour, a pleasure and a privilege to be here.
“I have said this many times before, but I have everything a manager could ever wish for, and I appreciate that so much.
“Hopefully, now we can add more trophies to the ones we have already won. That will be my focus.”
Having been appointed in 2016, Guardiola is by some distance Manchester City's most successful manager of all time, having won 18 major trophies during his time at the club.
That list includes their first-ever Champions League triumph in 2023 and six Premier League titles, including an unprecedented four on the spin.
He also boasts a 72.04% win percentage across all competitions, which is unsurprisingly the highest of any full-time City manager in history.
SportsMax is the Caribbean sports channel of choice, committed to providing sporting content of the highest quality to the Caribbean, delivered by a team of highly innovative, passionate and qualified professionals.
(876) 619-7629
digitalmedia@sportsmax.tv
