In a parallel universe, Everton are several points clear of Liverpool in their bid to clock up their fourth Premier League title in five years … and Manchester City are facing yet another relegation struggle.
Instead, when the Blues of Merseyside and Manchester square up on Saturday night in our reality, the situation is reversed, with Pep Guardiola ’s side aiming to keep the Toffees’ neighbours at arm’s length.
If City manage a win at Goodison Park, they will chalk up a remarkable NINTH successive win over Everton - not a bad record against a side that was, until fairly recently, seen as City’s bogey team.
The Blues used to have a dreadful record against Everton. After the 2008 takeover, they lost seven of the next ten meetings with the 'other' Merseysiders - a worse record than they had against Manchester United, Liverpool and Chelsea in the same period.
Why that should be was something of a mystery. Everton were always competitive and tough to beat in that spell, under David Moyes. They did not finish lower than eighth in those first five seasons after City suddenly became “the richest club in the world”. But they did not secure any top-four finish, either.
Perhaps it was the sense of injustice that City had the football equivalent of a lottery win when the Abu Dhabi United Group was seeking an English club in which to invest, and settled on City.
Had Everton moved more quickly from their antiquated Goodison Park ground, it could easily have been them that attracted the riches.
Everton chairman Bill Kenwright revealed in 2011 that he felt his club could have been the beneficiaries had they had a new stadium either planned or in place, and had he been “in the right place at the right time”.
But City’s 2003 move to the Commonwealth Games stadium had made them the more attractive proposition for Sheikh Mansour as he sought to widen Abu Dhabi’s portfolio and push the emirate as a hub for travel, tourism and commerce.
That rankled a little with Everton. There had always been a degree of empathy between the two clubs - both had become used to “living in the shadow” of an arrogant, highly successful neighbour, and had rejoiced in their earthier, more traditional support bases.
So when City manager Mark Hughes targeted one of Everton’s prized assets, Joleon Lescott, in 2009, there was a pretty angry reaction from Everton, and Moyes in particular.
He publicly slated the Blues, saying: "Lescott has had his head twisted in all of this. I hear that City think they are talking to people who make the decisions here, well that's me.
"I make the decisions, they have not talked to me and the player has been consistently told he is not for sale. He should get his head around that and get on with his career."
Lescott was then accused of having a bad attitude in training, dropped from the squad and eventually sold - for a £24million fee that made him the second-most expensive defender in English football history.
It proved to be good business as Lescott forged a partnership with Vincent Kompany that broke the Blues’ 35-year trophy duck, got them into the Champions League for the first time and then won the Premier League for the first time in 2012.
But Everton were fuming, and it showed whenever they faced City at that time, as Moyes cajoled his team into four straight wins in the next four meetings.
In the 2010-11 season when City booked that first top-four finish, Everton did the league double over them, and the following season when the Blues’ tussle with United for the title would go to the momentous final day, a Darron Gibson goal at Goodison gave them a 1-0 win that threatened to throw a spanner in the works.
Everton also played a part in the title destiny the following season, goals from Leon Osman and Nikola Jelavic condemning City to a 2-0 defeat that effectively handed the title to United in Sir Alex Ferguson's final season.
Everton were undoubtedly City’s bogey side at that point, although the tide began to turn in Manuel Pellegrini's first season in charge, 2013-14.
City eased to a 3-1 win at the Etihad that season after Romelu Lukaku had given the visitors the lead, but the travelling Blues fans headed down the M62 doused in pessimism for the return.
That game fell on May 3, with just three games left to go, and with City trailing leaders Liverpool by three points, with Chelsea second on 78.
A few days earlier, the Red Scousers had just seen Demba Ba’s goal mess up their title charge and give City a sniff of a chance of taking control.
But Goodison was perhaps the last place they would want to go to collect three points, and that was underlined when Ross Barkley gave the Toffees an early lead.
It all looked a bit familiar. But City were inspired by Sergio Aguero and Edin Dzeko, the Argentine drawing them level and the Bosnian Diamond's two goals forging them 3-1 ahead shortly into the second half.
Lukaku’s goal ensured a tense finish to the game, but Joe Hart’s brilliant save from Steven Naismith saw City hold on and move top, on goal difference.
When Liverpool let a 3-0 lead at Crystal Palace slip two days later, City pounced, and did not let it slip from their grasp, winning their last two games against Crystal Palace and West Ham.
The title was theirs, and the Everton bogey had been broken with a first league double over them since Kevin Reeves had warped up a 3-1 win at Goodison in 1981.
The jinx briefly reared its head in the Guardiola era, as yet another Lukaku goal earned Everton a 1-1 draw at the Etihad when Aguero and Kevin De Bruyne both missed penalties and then, in the return game, the Blues were thumped 4-0, which remains Guardiola's heaviest defeat in a league game in his managerial career.
That Scouse joy was short-lived - they managed another draw at the Etihad the following season when Kyle Walker was the victim of a ludicrous red card, but since then meetings between the two have brought eight straight City wins.
That is the Blues’ best current winning sequence against a Premier League side, apart from their 11 on the bounce against Watford and ten against Bournemouth.
And with the Toffees on a run of 12 defeats in their last 16 league games, seeing them slide down the table despite a brief new manager bounce under new boss Frank Lampard, few will back the Merseyside team to end that run.
