Six months ago Liverpool and Manchester City were about to face each other for the second time in a week and there was still a train of thought, predominantly from neutral observers, that their games remained too friendly to be a truly great rivalry.
While the quality of football was among the highest ever seen in England, there was an absence of needle and a little too much mutual respect for there to be real fireworks. Who, for instance, was going to throw a slice of pizza in the tunnel?
Now, in the aftermath of Sunday afternoon's collision at Anfield, such talk can be parked for good because this has got very ugly, very quickly. Too ugly, in fact. The level of animosity is high on and off the pitch and the fallout is going to drag on.
The Football Association are gathering evidence before opening disciplinary proceedings and Merseyside Police are speaking to both clubs after missiles were thrown at Pep Guardiola and City players during the match, parts of Anfield were vandalised by visiting supporters who also sang chants described by their hosts as “vile”, followed by allegations that City’s team bus was attacked when leaving the stadium.
It is a classic tale of familiarity breeding contempt. Sunday was the 18th time Pep Guardiola's City have faced Liverpool since Klopp arrived at Anfield midway through the 2016/17 campaign.
The head to head record stands at eight Liverpool wins, five for City across all competitions and in that time Guardiola has delivered 11 trophies compared to Klopp’s seven.
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City have failed to win the league only once in five seasons and that was the Covid-interrupted campaign when Liverpool ended their drought. The Reds have also won the trophy that still eludes those in light blue.
The hostility has been festering for some time. Coaches have been attacked outside Anfield in the past - one carrying supporters in 2015 and, in 2018, the players’ bus - and this is not the first instance of City supporters singing about the Hillsborough disaster.
This weekend, however, the mood became so much darker before, during and after an absorbing game that has been overshadowed by accusations and counterclaims.
Some behind the scenes at City believe that Klopp’s comments on Friday about state-owned clubs creating a financial imbalance fanned the flames. But any suggestion that they may have contributed to the disgusting songs about Hillsborough is absurd. City officials stress they do not condone such chants.
Klopp, of course, reiterated his belief that City are the best team in the world and Guardiola is the game’s finest current manager. Except his assertion that City, who are owned by the rules of Abu Dhabi, alongside Saudi Arabia-backed Newcastle United and Qatari-run Paris Saint-Germain have a financial advantage was viewed as antagonistic - even if there was some truth to the German’s observation, backed up by the spreadsheets.
Yet Klopp is no angel and there can be no excuse for his behaviour when berating a match official, leading to him being sent off. At a time when grassroots leagues are struggling to fulfil fixtures because there is a shortage of referees, there must be fierce criticism of those among the elite who display such anger - regardless of accepting blame after the fact. Among the players there is growing aggro too, epitomised by Bernardo Silva’s tussle with Mohamed Salah in the second half.
Last season there were still claims that this rivalry could not reach the overall level of Arsenal and Manchester United in the late-90s because it lacked the bite of Liverpool’s duels with Chelsea in the early years of the Roman Abramovich era.
But now the obscenely good football is being married with a nastiness that has been an ingredient to all of English football’s biggest rivalries. And, as always in these situations, no one is faultless. There is plenty of blaming and complaining to go around.
Unless a cup competition pits them together, they will not meet again until early April. By that point both clubs will have played up to 32 games each but no one expects the anger to have dissipated.
