Liverpool sealed their first league win at Manchester City in 10 years.
Mohamed Salah broke the deadlock on 15 minutes via a Nathan Ake deflection after Dominik Szobozalai had teed him up from a short corner.
The pair combined to double the Reds’ lead shortly before the half-time interval with Szobozlai cutting a low finish to leave Ederson rooted to the spot.
Arne Slot’s side have now moved 11 points clear of Arsenal at the Premier League’s summit despite playing a game more than their nearest challengers.
Here were the key talking points from the Etihad Stadium:
One step closer to the title
They have resisted it until now but Liverpool’s travelling support are no longer worried about tempting fate in their quest for a second Premier League title.
Chants of ‘we’re gonna win the league’ were last aired by Kopites in early 2020, when not even a pandemic could deny them a long-awaited crown.
But after Arne Slot’s side moved 11 points clear with a first domestic away win over Manchester City in a decade, this proved an ideal moment for its revival.
Arsenal’s slip-up at home to West Ham on Saturday put destiny back in the Reds’ hands and they took full advantage at a rain-lashed Etihad Stadium.
A lot can happen between now and May 25 but the Londoners still require the current leaders to suffer no fewer than four defeats from their final 11 games.
Given Liverpool faced a subpar City on the back of a 22-match unbeaten run and without losing on the road at all, the chances of a first appeared slim.
Any hopes Mikel Arteta’s men had of his former employers doing them a favour wilted even before Mohamed Salah had struck an early opener.
It’s now only a matter of time before the open top bus parade can be booked.
Salah makes his Ballon d’Or case
This continues to prove to be the season of all seasons for Mohamed Salah.
Liverpool’s talisman has racked up 51 combined goals and assists which helped elevate him, inevitably, to the club’s joint third top scorer of all-time.
A haul of 241 strikes drew him level with Gordon Hodgson but drilling down into Salah’s latest feats at the Etihad only makes it all the more impressive.
No other player across Europe’s top five leagues has amassed the 50 direct goal involvements in all competitions this season that Salah has to his name.
Beyond that, he is also the first player to score and assist in 11 top flight games so far, the most on the continent since Lionel Messi a decade ago.
Fittingly, the Egyptian made his latest compelling case to follow in Messi’s footsteps by winning the Ballon d’Or at the home of its latest incumbent.
City fans taunted Vinicius with a reminder of how Rodri gazumped him to last year’s accolade before their Champions League play-off loss to Real Madrid.
The Brazilian’s response to being spurned in that vote was to insist that he would win it ten times over if required and warned ‘they aren’t ready’.
Unfortunately for him, this year at least, Salah has other ideas.
Clash lacks its usual spark
Whenever City and Liverpool face off, it is often a clash for the ages.
They are intense, unforgiving affairs in which both teams push each other to fight for every inch – quite literally in January 2019 – in a true battle of wills.
This latest encounter, however, was more yardstick than ‘fine margins’.
Granted, Pep Guardiola’s fallen champions are 20 points off the pace and were without Erling Haaland but their meeting still lacked its usual spark.
The change in the touchline dynamic with the Catalan no longer able to joust with Jurgen Klopp, as the pair did for eight years, is the most likely explainer.
Going toe-to-toe with a manager whose tactical outlook was in stark contrast to his own made the thrill of the chase all the more enticing for Guardiola.
Slot, meanwhile, is a disciple at the altar of his opposite number; more willing for his team to bide time with patient build-up before landing a sucker punch.
Invariably, they were always likely to cancel each other out to some degree but the absence of punchiness in proceedings made for a strange atmosphere.