Manchester City and Liverpool locked together in battle.

Manchester City and Liverpool locked together in battle.

It is both geographically, psychologically, emotionally and, quite possibly, one of the most spiritually intriguing Premier League title races in years and seasons. The pulses are racing, the mercury is rising to boiling point, nails are being bitten to the quick and this season Manchester City have got proper challengers, genuine threats to their Premier League title. This has been in complete contrast to last season when the contest was effectively over by Christmas Eve which, from a neutral viewpoint, is a blessed relief.

Now though City, who thought they might have sleepwalked their way into winning the Premier League title again, now find one of their oldest rivals rearing up in their wing mirrors, honking their horns and revving up their engines. In the old days City used to be pestered by their noisy neighbours United in the days when gloating rights were the exclusive preserve of the Old Trafford club. To some extent the name of Sir Alex Ferguson must still stick in City's craw but now the feeling is markedly different.

City are the ones who play at a posh new stadium with vast open spaces, possessing a massive global appeal and a fanbase who can barely believe what's happened to the club in the last 10 years or so. No longer do they have to contend with the smaller but compact Maine Road and that supporter who kept up that persistent ringing bell. Gone also are the days of farcical music hall comedy when the club almost slipped off the Football League radar before tumbling into  the old Third Division.

Now of course City have rich Arab owners, a firmly established pedigree and seemingly top flight status guaranteed for the foreseeable future. And yet who could have seen that coming during the good, old, bad old days of Rodney Marsh, Colin Bell and Francis Lee, when those giant defensive rocks known as Mike Doyle and Tony Book hovered in opposition penalty areas like lighthouse beacons.

City are slick, modern, mainstream, excessively stylish, wonderfully easy on the eye and pass the ball as if it were on some continuous conveyor belt. The ball travels often independently and magnetically from feet to feet in a dizzying blur. Players like Leroy Sane, Raheem Sterling, Fernandinho and Sergio Aguero insist that the game of football belongs in the art gallery rather than some wild and inhospitable ghost town where nobody wants to know you.

This season though the journey has been fraught with several bumpy roads, isolated cul-de-sacs and just a few steep hills. The poetry that City so beautifully delivered in both stanzas and verses last season has now been reduced to some slightly incoherent tale that might have been lost in the translation.

Still, Manchester City are back on top of the Premier League after demolishing and ransacking a Chelsea team 6-0, a team who not only flatter to deceive but may never re-capture their Jose Mourinho salad days when the Premier League was once won on a back to back basis. Now their ex banking boss Sarri seemed to have the right template for success earlier on in the season but then discovered that it was just a rusty shade of grey.

But here we are in the second week of February and the chances are that this one could go all the way to the wire in early May. The Premier League has often been won at critical stages of the season, those pivotal, strategic moments when somebody either blunders, slips awkwardly and then presents their rival with an open goal.

Several seasons ago Liverpool thought that those golden days of the 1970s and 1980s had once again smiled righteously on them. But then in a crucial, end of season game against, ironically, Chelsea, the one and only Steven Gerrard stumbled like a young foal and Chelsea broke forward like hungry tigers and scored the winning goal. Liverpool had to be content with the runners up spot and the grumbling dissenters on the Kop sighed their understandable displeasure.

Of course we all know that Liverpool have never won the Premier League but still proudly boast over 18 old First Division titles. It is now 29 years since the Merseysiders last pot of gold and although FA Cups and a Champions League trophy have since softened the blow somewhat even Sir Jimmy Tarbuck must be wondering whether his local team can give him something to brag about on the after dinner circuit.

The sun lit days of Kevin Keegan, John Toshack, Ian Callaghan, Ray Kennedy, Terry Mcdermott, Steve Heighway and Kenny Dalglish are rather like Olympian echoes from the past. But the decades have passed and Liverpool have found themselves in a lengthy state of limbo where first gear refuses to move into fifth gear. This is not to suggest that Liverpool are sinking in the quicksand but the double messiahs of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley are no longer around to exert that unique charisma.

Now though Liverpool's manager, probably by his own admission, bears more of a resemblance to a member of a German heavy metal band rather than the classical standards set by both Shankly and Paisley. Liverpool now have at the helm one Jurgen Klopp, a mass of chaotic hair, beard and recklessly disobedient glasses that occasionally seem to end up somewhere in Salford when it all gets a bit too much for him.

Klopp is admirably enthusiastic, often over effusive at times and then swept away by the occasion as if events were somehow just completely out of his control. When Liverpool recently beat Crystal Palace at Anfield 4-3 recently you'd have thought he'd just been announced as the new director of a reputable oil company. He leapt into the air, fist pumped like a man who'd just been given his first million pounds and then kept punching the air over and over again, face now overcome with glee.

The German has at its disposal the brilliant Sadio Mane, the superbly destructive Mo Salah up front, the equally as lethal Brazilian Firminho, the now experienced veteran including James Milner, the ever secure Virgil Van Dyjk, the ever threatening Andrew Robertson roaming and stomping down the flank and a team of show stoppers and sweet passing specialists who know how to pass, move and interchange with the most fluid fluency.

At the London Stadium last Monday Liverpool looked as though they were in desperate need of a thorough service and MOT. Their engines were overheating, the carburettor looked as though it needed a good rest and some of the gaskets had obviously blown. West Ham tore into Liverpool, damaging and disrupting the normal rhythms that Liverpool's football had grown accustomed to up until now.  When Michal Antonio equalised Liverpool's opening goal, another set of worried frowns had appeared on Klopp's face.

Still after Liverpool's hugely impressive 3-0 victory over Bournemouth at Anfield we are now back at football's famous square one. At the moment there can be no way of telling of who may lose their nerve first but for the sake of football maybe these palpitations are good for its soul. Manchester City look like one of those flustered boxing heavyweights who may have been jolted back with a hit to the chin from a threatening jab. You can see that they haven't been affected at all by this setback because they're still dancing on their feet and remain unscathed.

Liverpool though do look as though they're ready to take City all the way to the finishing line without any signs of tiredness or sagging spirits. Theirs is a renewed sense of ambition, a healthy sense of adventure, feisty doggedness and a bloody minded perseverance that won't let it go. Klopp is desperate to be acclaimed as a latter day incarnation of Shankly or Paisley, Bill or Bob. He hasn't that tight grey jacket which Shankly once applauded the idolatrous Kop after winning the League championship and he doesn't have that deeply knowledgeable air of Bob Paisley who once came to work in his slippers.

So here we have what seems to be an authentic two horse race between two footballing thoroughbreds. Champing at the bit behind Liverpool and City are Spurs who can only hark back to that season when they almost pipped Leicester City to the Premier League. But the odds now realistically favour either City or Liverpool.

The Premier League season has now reached that very interesting point when the only fittest may survive and only the faint hearted can look now. It is a time for emotional sighs, melodramatic pauses for breath and then a collective gasp of wonderment. Nobody has forgotten their lines yet but by the middle of late March and the middle of April we may well all be on tenterhooks. It looks as if the final curtain may well be some way off. The plot is thickening too quickly. Pass the chocolates somebody please.