Blue Moon, Blue Moon!” This breathless contest ended with Vincent Kompany in tears and the champions’ supporters in fine voice. They heralded how their magnificent Manchester City team are favourites to claim a second successive title on the season’s final day.
Bernardo Silva had threatened to make it his show before Kompany’s 70th-minute intervention: a 30-yard piledriver that claimed a memorable victory before Sunday’s trip to Brighton where, if they win, City have a fourth Premier League crown.
Silva was a whirr of blue-shirted invention, trying to run the game from his wide-right berth, demanding the ball and driving hard at Brendan Rodgers’ impressive Leicester City team. The visitors’ answer was to double up on him yet this was not always enough.
One first-half vignette saw Silva in Diego Maradona mode: a mesmeric sight of swivelling hips and magic feet that dizzied the Foxes’ defence and came close to creating the opener.
Silva was showing why he has gone from the first reserve of last year to first on the teamsheet for Pep Guardiola; a player who kept Kevin De Bruyne out of central midfield earlier this season.
De Bruyne is injured now and so Phil Foden was given the nod to partner David Silva, with Bernardo– the Portuguese Silva – out wide. If the 18-year-old’s inclusion caught the eye, the suspicion was a subplot might be the Kompany-Jamie Vardy duel.
So it proved in a first half that ended goalless. Kompany had ended it with a mad slash at the impressive James Maddison for which the referee, Mike Dean, booked him, City’s captain having momentarily stopped shadowing Vardy.
Two games ago Marcus Rashford’s pace caused Kompany to pick up a yellow card during a torrid opening few minutes at Manchester United before the champions pulled away after the break, winning 2-0.
In retaining Kompany for the game last Sunday at Burnley, and now this encounter,one could see the manager’s faith in him, plus evidence of how John Stones’s stock has fallen.
Before joining City in the summer of 2016 Guardiola identified the Everton centre-back as his must-buy player, a man who could build play from defence to attack as the Catalan loves his teams to do.
Yet fast-forward three years and Guardiola’s mistrust of Stones was shown by his decision to ask a creaking 33-year-old to try to stymie the verve of Vardy, who arrived for this game with 10 goals in the 10 games since Rodgers became his manager.
Inside the first minute Kompany showed how he would hope to stop Vardy as he twice pressed the No 9 deep inside the Leicester half. If the second time had the striker pirouetting and laying the ball off slickly, the third had Vardy toppling over as Kompany committed the foul: again, in Leicester’s half, with Dean coming close to booking him.
Bernardo Silva’s mission, meanwhile, to be City’s main man continued as the second half started. He was the filling in a Ben Chilwell-Maddison sandwich, moments after taking aim at Kaspar Schmeichel’s goal – flashing the ball as wide as he would high a little later. Guardiola rolled his eyes at the miss but his playmaker was at least trying to turn the match City’s way as the manager’s masterplan began to teeter.
Tottenham Hotspur, United, Burnley and now Leicester: in the games since being knocked out of the Champions League by Spurs, Guardiola’s aim was to roll into Brighton with the championship still firmly in his team’s hands.
Each time Guardiola tuned in to watch Liverpool he had seen a team that refused to give his side an easy ride to a second successive championship. To match the 1-0 wins over Tottenham and Burnley – plus the 2-0 win at United – Jürgen Klopp’s team reeled off victories at Cardiff (2-0), Huddersfield (5-0), and Saturday’s last-gasp 3-2 affair at Newcastle United, when Fabinho “bought” a free-kick from Matt Ritchie and Divock Origi headed the ensuing delivery home.
No forensic analysis was required of the teams’ run-ins to find that Guardiola’s has been far tougher. Yet each challenger had been swatted aside until Rodgers’ men arrived to give City their toughest test yet.
Now, though, Kompany stepped up for a winner he will long remember.
