If Manchester City needed any extra ammunition for an assault on the Premier League again next season then they now have it.
However and whenever this campaign ends, the Blues will be desperate to make the title theirs once again in whatever form the 2020/21 season takes.
They won't be short of motivation. It is likely to be Pep Guardiola's final season in charge of the club and they will want to prove to Liverpool that their relative dip this year was simply a one-off.
But there's been a feeling in recent weeks that Guardiola has been trying to engineer a siege mentality amongst his squad. Now the rest of the Premier League's top clubs have finished that process for him.
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