An outstanding goal from Trent Alexander-Arnold cancelled out Erling Haaland’s opener as the two teams widely considered the Premier League’s best took a point each from their top-of-the-table clаsh on Saturday.

.

Alexander-Arnold helped Liverpool regain 1 point from Man City

Haaland helped Man City open the score in a tense match

Defending champions Manchester City, which has won five of the last six Premier League titles, renewed its sporting rivalry with a resurgent Liverpool—the team that interrupted City’s run of domestic league championships in 2020.

This is a new-look Liverpool team, complete with a refreshed midfield and a forward line in which only Mohamed Salah is a familiar face from that title-winning team.

City, too, are a new version of sorts, building on last season’s treble success but with the added dynamic of the tricky, skilful winger Jeremy Doku.

Both Liverpool and City play with high defensive lines, and when two such teams meet, the game can become condensed in the middle third of the field.

Saturday’s fixture began as a claustrophobic game of cat and mouse. Those situations usually require something unusual, an error, or a piece of high-quality play to break the deadlock.

.

.

Liverpool center-back Joel Matip is fairly unusual, and his forward runs out from defence, striding past City midfielders, offered hope of a breakthrough for the visitors.

One such foray from Matip made space for Salah to cross into the dаnger area, from which Darwin Nunez’s header was well saved by Ederson.

City’s own breakthrough looked like it might come from the unpredictable dribbling of Doku or the goalscoring battering ram that is Haaland.

As those opening stages played out, it felt like something these teams are not known for that would likely break the deadlock.

In the end it was a mis-kιck from Liverpool goalkeeper Alisson, widely considered one of the best in the world in his position, which gave City a chance.

The Brazilian slipped as he tried to launch a long kιck upfield, and with space that had developed in between Liverpool’s breаking attackers and stationary defenders, Nathan Ake was able to find Haaland who bumbled a shot into the corner via Alisson’s outstretched left hand.

Heading into this game, Liverpool had only won once against City in the last 14 Premier League meetings between the sides in Manchester, and that was on Klopp’s first visit to this stadium as Liverpool manager in 2015.

Once City took the lead it felt like the best Liverpool could manage would be a draw, and once Alexander-Arnold equalised, Klopp’s side seemed content with that outcome.

This equalising goal ticked the box for high-quality play.

Alexander-Arnold, the Liverpool right-back/midfielder, popped up in an attacking midfield position in the space created by Cody Gakpo’s run, received a pass from Salah and used his technique to quickly control the ball and then shoot into the far corner past Ederson.

Klopp replaced midfielder Alexis Mac Allister with the more defensive Wataru Endo for the last five minutes or so, shortly after the goal,

The draw between the first and second-placed Premier League teams leaves the door open for third-placed Arsenal, but the nature of this game confirmed these as the league’s two heavyweights at this moment in time.

They can sometimes cancel each other out in moments, and the intensity of the out-of-possession play and pressing can make the build-up in these games look sloppy at times, but when a passage of play comes together in such circumstances it is a display of some of the best football around.

Over the course of the 90 minutes, City may have outperformed Liverpool in this regard, but there was still a real, if less frequent, threаt from Pep Guardiola’s team as well as an underlying, potential threаt from Klopp’s team.

Considering how far these two teams have come, this is probably just the first of many episodes in the most recent season where they are the featured turns. Alexander-Arnold owned this episode.