How Manchester City And Liverpool Continue To Headline The Premier League

The English Premier League might have a title race after all. Just as it looked like Manchester City were cruising at the top of the league, it only took one weekend’s results to change the outlook in Europe’s most popular top flight league.

Liverpool’s win at home to Norwich, not least the nature of it as they came back from a goal down to win 3-1, along with City’s 3-2 loss at home in a thriller against Tottenham Hotspur, changed the dynamic at the top of the table.

Liverpool’s game in hand is important, and they will join City on 26 games after they have faced Leeds United this Wednesday. Win that and Jurgen Klopp’s side will be just three points off the leaders.

With the teams still to play each other once more this season, there is still another chance for one of these teams to directly affect the other.

The focus is now very much on Liverpool as the chasing team. There is a general desire among football fans for a title race as opposed to one of these teams running away with the title as Liverpool did in 2019/20 and City in 2020/21.

There is also the prospect of these teams meeting each other in one or more of the cup competitions in which they both remain.

If the pair are drawn against each other in the quarter-finals of the Champions League and also drawn together in the FA Cup semi-final—should they make it that far—City and Liverpool could potentially meet four times in the space of ten days in April, with the league meeting falling on the 9th or 10th of that month.

In the previous five and a half seasons, no team has spent more on transfers than Man City, though Pep Guardiola’s team are far from the only big spenders in the league.

Liverpool sit sixth in this particular ranking, per Transfermarkt, so the fact these two teams are so far ahead isn’t all down to transfer spending.

Everton have spent the fifth-most during this period, and are on the verge of being dragged into a relegation battle, if they are not in one already, while Manchester United, Arsenal, and Chelsea have all splashed the cash in the transfer market on numerous occasions.

It’s safe to say Liverpool and City’s approaches to the transfer market have their differences, but there is a common theme behind what they do—one of organisation, structure, and meticulous planning.

Liverpool probably edge City in terms of their recruitment—they have to as they can’t afford as many mistakes, but both tend to have more hits than misses.

Kevin De Bruyne and Mohamed Salah are prefect examples. Both were at Chelsea earlier in their career, sold to clubs on the continent, before returning to the Premier League with City and Liverpool respectively to become among the best players in the world in their positions.

Both teams have missed out on players to other clubs, who have then failed to impress once at those clubs. This suggests the structure into which players arrive at City and Liverpool is far more organised, more prepared, and more deliberate in terms of knowing what a player will offer and where in the squad, than the seemingly haphazard approaches of the others.

There are long-term-project managers at both—Klopp and Guardiola—who are currently the fifth and sixth longest-serving managers in the four divisions of the English Football League (second and third in the Premier League, behind Burnley’s Sean Dyche).

This provides stability, while the employment of assistant managers such as Zeljko Buvac and Mikel Arteta previously, and Pep Lijnders and Juanma Lillo currently, keep their tactics fresh and help tie everything together between training and matches, building on the manager’s overall philosophy.

This runs throughout the club and aids the introduction of academy products such as Phil Foden at City, and Trent Alexander Arnold at Liverpool, meaning these sides have important local flavour—quality ones at that—to go with their imported stars.

While a club like Manchester United may sign a player to boost their share price, or Chelsea might sign a player to make a statement, Liverpool and City are purely focused on which players have the quality and mentality to blend in with their existing squad while also improving it.

After United added Raphael Varane, Jadon Sancho and Ronaldo, and Chelsea made a big splash to sign Romelu Lukaku for $135 million, both were tipped to at least challenge for the title this season. And with good reason. Given their resources they should be, but the way everything has come together or, more accurately, hasn’t come together, means they aren’t.

Clubs with new money such as Newcastle could learn from this, and it’s a lesson that will (or should) have been learnt the hard way by Everton and Arsenal by now.

That City and Liverpool are the headline acts in English football once again is down to much more than transfer spending and available funds.

It’s down to an overall structure which involves meticulous planning in all areas all geared towards making the playing squad as effective as possible on the pitch.