Manchester City vs. Liverpool didn’t have goals, but we learned a lot about the two teams

Well, that was Manchester City’s visit to Liverpool. It came and it happened and it went. And whichever one of you took the monkey’s paw and wished for the game to really show us something about the Premier League title race, thank you so much. Look what you did.

Last season, Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool Football Club (to give them their full name) played Pep Guardiola’s City (likewise) on four occasions. We got 18 goals out of those games, which works out as one every 20 minutes. And even if the 5-0 at the Etihad was tilted as a contest by Sadio Mane’s early red card, the other three games were almost entirely brilliant. Festivals of attacking ambition, slick football, and giddy chaos.

This time around we got a nil-nil.

But there are nil-nils and then there are nil-nils, and while it’s hard to ever truly love a goalless draw, one can at least admit to a certain amount of grudging respect. Decent nil-nils also lead to a kind of follow-on contest, as both teams jostle to claim the moral victory. You don’t get any points for it, but it does make everybody feel better.

Certainly, in this case, it was the most surprising result that the game could have thrown up. If you’d missed the game, and been told that one side or other had scored eight, it would have been less of a shock. Scoring goals is what these teams do.

Which means when they don’t, something’s happened. The something that seems to have happened here is Manchester City deciding to reject the path of chaos in favor of control. They didn’t exactly park the bus, but they weren’t barreling down the fast lane at their usual mph. A proper back four with some caution in the full-backs, a narrower and tighter midfield, and even a little bit of keep-ball when the moment demanded it.

It would be unfair to suggest that City weren’t trying to win the game, but they were utterly determined not to lose it. And as Guardiola explained afterwards, that meant being sensible.

If it is an open game at Anfield, you don’t even have one chance, not even one per cent of a chance ... up and down I’m pretty sure they are the best team in the world in these transitions, offensive, defensive. It is (a team) built for that. In that situation, they are much better than us.

Which is, as Virgil van Dijk has noted, a compliment to Liverpool. Two compliments, really: good and dangerous. Liverpool fans can often seem unhealthily keen on their own football club, but hey, it turns out Guardiola agrees with them. They are one of the bestest of the best.

Yet Liverpool didn’t win, at home, against a team they’ve been pretty good at beating over the last couple of seasons. And while Riyad Mahrez’s penalty miss must have felt, in the moment, as euphoric as any goal, it doesn’t change the fact that the game went the way City wanted it to.

Maybe not the result, though a point at Anfield is generally worth more to the visitors than the home side. City came with a plan, and pulled it off, and that leaves Liverpool in a strange place: good, dangerous, and apparently containable.

Whether teams less disgustingly loaded than City have the capacity to pull off that containment remains to be seen. Perhaps, between them, Napoli and City have cracked the code, worked out how to stifle the service to Liverpool’s free-running front three, and everybody will be able to replicate this blueprint.

Or perhaps Liverpool are just a bit knackered after a big month, and their front three a touch out of form, and both City and Napoli pretty good. The problem with big games in October is that there’s a lot to come afterwards. Liverpool have probably had the trickier side of the fixtures so far, and are level on points with City. Hard to be too upset with that.

But then again, Liverpool finished 25 points behind City last time around. And while the precise size of that gap might have been affected by Liverpool’s late-season focus on the Champions League, City were still miles ahead.

This season, Liverpool look stronger. Their squad is deeper, they have Virgil van Dijk for a full term, they have a proper goalkeeper. They will almost certainly finish closer to City than last season. But finishing at least one point ahead of City — which will probably be enough to win the league — is a much larger task, and its one that Sunday’s performance suggests may be incomplete.

After all, City went to the home of their biggest rivals for the title to play what should be the hardest game of the campaign. They couldn’t pick Kevin De Bruyne. And they controlled the game, and the opposition, and left with a point that should have been three: doubtless frustrating in the moment, but likely encouraging in the broader scheme of things. We didn’t know if Liverpool could be stopped at Anfield, and we didn’t know if City could stop them. Now we do.

But if the answer to both of those questions suggest that City have the edge, at least head-to-head, then Liverpool can take heart from the calendar, and from the nature of the mission ahead of them. Taking the league to Anfield, it seems, is going to involve beating everybody else up, bigger and better than City. Seems like the kind of thing Klopp and his players could really get into. You suspect there won’t be too many more nil-nils.