The transfer of power is completely at the top of the Premier League.
After Arne Slot's Champions-Elect has added an emphatic defeat to the fallen four-in-a-row kings of Pep Guardiola, we can officially stop pretending to be a title race this season.
Liverpool only runs at the top of the table, 11 points away from an arsenal side that has no fit center-forward and has valuable small discipline.
The Reds are the best team in England due to a national mile, as they proven by winning a league match at Etihad for the first time in a decade.
Mo Salah rose with a bent strike from a brilliant corner kickroutine and then raises Dominik Szoboslai for a 2-0 half-time lead when the city received a painful lesson in ruthless efficiency by the runaway leaders.
Liverpool is rarely exciting, but they are impressive in their clarity of thought, the speed of their attacks and the surgical nature of their finish.
City dominated the ball but never looked like winning.
It was their 14th defeat in all competitions since the end of October. At that time, Liverpool was unbeaten in the Premier League, during which their only meaningful defeat was when Slot sent the reserves in Plymouth in the FA Cup.
The gap between these clubs – for as long as the top two of England – is huge.
City, who were surpassed by Real Madrid When they leave the Champions League in midweek, cannot even give Elite Clubs a good game at the moment.
The coronation of Liverpool was almost confirmed yesterday by the winner of Jarrod Bowen for West Ham in Arsenal.
Yet City had never lost a home game to Liverpool under Guardiola.
Despite all the sparkle of the competitions and the intensity of the rivalry between his side and Jurgen Klopp's Reds, there was never a Premier League win, for a crowd, for both sides.
For City there was no Erling Haaland, while Ruben Dias, Ilkay Gundogan and Bernardo Silva all rested after their blockage in the Bernabeu.
Kevin De Bruyne returned, but the Belgian simply embodies the sudden, incomprehensible decline of the city.
Guardiola used Phil Foden as an improvised center Vooruit and it was 'false nine' all around with Curtis Jones playing through the middle, leaving Darwin Nunez, Cody Gakpo and Diogo Jota on the couch.
On paper, that seemed like an unlikely show of respect for the bullet of Guardiola troops.
It turned out to be nothing like that.
It took only 14 minutes for the League leaders to go in front with that beautifully choreographed corner routine.
After a Lewis Blunder, Luis Diaz won the set piece with a shot turned around the nearby Ederson pole.
Alexis Mac Allister delivered the low to Dominik Szoboszlai, who had deposited from the nearby pole in the room in the room and had neatly brought back for Salah to score with a shot that took a heavy deflection of Nathan Ake.
Arsenal has a mural of their set-piece coach. Maybe Liverpool will have one soon. “
Slot's side had not yet looked convincingly. Doku often turned Trent Alexander-Arnold inside out, but while City was dominated, there was no end product.
The champions yielded in the half hour, but while Omar Marmoush was cleverly finished, he was in the distant pole in a comfortable offside position.
Soon it was 2-0, the Lofted-Pass of Alexander-Arnold, who shot Salah, who shot forward and square in front of Szoboszlai to ping his shot along a frozen Nierneron from the many city players who disappear at all levels are.
The sound of jubilant, crowing scousers hit the eardrums of every city fan and of the nation in general.
And it was the last staircase of the first half to perfectly summarized the implosion of the city – a shot of the once -grheat de Bruyne that sailed over the corner flag.
After the break, De Bruyne tried a sliding tackle on Szoboszlai, missed and career in Guardiola in his technical environment.
Liverpool thought they had gone three – when Ryan's visionary pass released Graveberch Szoboszlai, who quadrated for Jones to tap – only for VAR to consider the Hungarian offside through a toenagel when he had been on an earlier understanding.
Technology that punishes a brilliant movement and lazy defend.
Immediately the city woke up and forced Marmoush's severe shot a first meaningful save from Alisson.
Then Diaz cut in and had brilliantly saved a powerful effort by a completely vast Ederson.
De Bruyne was removed instead of James McATEE, but then Liverpool was at home and excluded.
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