Man City vs Liverpool: A contest on the verge of becoming the greatest in English football history

On Friday, Manchester City discovered when their FA Cup semi-final with Liverpool will take place, meaning Pep Guardiola has a complete picture of what the next few weeks hold for his team.

Admittedly, the Catalan could have mapped out 90% of his plans for a hectic 15-day period when City return from the international break, but Guardiola knows for certain now that he’ll have three days to prepare for the Wembley clash with Liverpool, and then just a four-day gap until they host Brighton & Hove Albion in the league.

It is a rather daunting run of fixtures for City when they come back from the mid-season hiatus in club football.

First up, it’s a trip to Turf Moor on 2 April, which should offer a typical arduous afternoon against a side in the throes of a relegation dogfight.

Then it’s the double headers with Atletico Madrid in the quarter-finals of the Champions League, followed on both occasions by clashes with Jurgen Klopp’s men.

The first, on 10 April, could go a long way in deciding where the title will ultimately end up, before the latter six days later will end talk of a treble or quadruple for one of the great sides.

Then it’s Brighton and Watford in the league, before a potential Champions League semi-final, which would represent at least five weeks in a row where Guardiola’s side have a midweek fixture, not to mention the league clash with Wolverhampton Wanderers which must be squeezed in at some stage before the end of the campaign.

City’s Achilles heel?

In total, Guardiola’s men could face another 16 games in all competitions before the end of the term, all packed into the space of little more than a month and a half.

It’s why selection and rotation will be so key for City in the coming weeks, and why Liverpool may just fancy themselves to pip their rivals to the post on a number of fronts this term. For the highly talented squad Guardiola has assembled at the Etihad Stadium, he has mainly relied on a relatively limited core over the course of the campaign.

In fact, of City’s 44 games this season, only those 15 players have started in 15 games or more, with the likes of Nathan Ake, Oleksandr Zinchenko, Fernandinho and Cole Palmer introduced fleetingly when required.

Meanwhile, Liverpool’s squad just seems so much better stocked, and capable of playing consistently every three or four days. It’s Liverpool who have won nine in a row in the league, while City, as excellent as they were in the winter months, have dropped points in three of the last seven.

At least from Guardiola’s perspective, it’s only Ruben Dias who is currently on the injury table, while Trent Alexander-Arnold’s absence from the Liverpool side looks to have struck at the one area where Klopp lacks a like-for-like replacement.

English football’s greatest rivalry?

Either way, the final months look set for a titanic tussle between two of England’s greatest sides, between two squads who have consistently amazed in recent years, and between two managers who have won it all.

When the sides met in October, there was a debate in certain circles as to how this rivalry compared to some of the greatest in the Premier League era, namely Manchester United’s enduring battles with Arsenal around the turn of millennium.

Whether those clashes lack the furore and passion of the meetings between Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsene Wenger’s men is up for debate, but it seems hard to think of another period when the Premier League’s top two sides were discussed as the preeminent clubs in Europe, and they could meet in three competitions before the end of the term.

City vs Liverpool has a feel to it now, this isn’t just a flash in the pan. There’s history, drama, legendary figures and there have genuinely seismic clashes between them in recent years.

It’s a fixture that is on the cusp of going down as the greatest long-running contest between two clubs in the history of English football - the next six weeks could, and will, have a huge bearing on how that drawn-out rivalry will be remembered in years to come.