Are Liverpool and Man City set to dominate Premier League again?

After historically great seasons, it’s shaping up that Liverpool and Man City will be dueling to the end once again this year.

In the end, it all ended in something of an anticlimax. There was no Sergio Aguero moment like the one that famously won Manchester City their first ever Premier League title back in 2012. The twists and turns usually associated with a title race were somewhat lacking. And yet there was still something compelling about watching two teams pushing each other to previously unprecedented heights.

Liverpool would have been champions in any other season bar one (the one before). Their final points tally of 97 was the third-highest in Premier League history, they won every single one of their last nine fixtures, and yet they were still beaten to the finish line by Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City side.

These two teams set a new standard at the top of the Premier League and with a new season on the horizon they will meet again in this weekend’s Community Shield, the traditional English soccer curtain-raiser. This is a fixture usually designed to pit the Premier League champions against the FA Cup winners. Last season, City won both titles, but if this is a game between the two best teams in the country Liverpool have more than earned their place.

There’s little reason to believe the pair’s supremacy will be challenged this season either. Man City made Spanish midfielder Rodri the most expensive player in their history, paying £62.8 million to sign him from Atletico Madrid. This, however, pales in comparison to the spending of some of their rivals.

Indeed, Arsenal, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have all spent the majority of the summer scrambling around the transfer market. With just week left of the window all three aforementioned team are still waiting on deals to be pushed through. City don’t have this problem and neither do Liverpool, despite only signing two fledgling youngsters.

Much of this is down to the way both City and Liverpool have assembled their respective squads over the past few years. There is a calculated logic to their transfer business. Both clubs spend big, but they only do so when they have to, when they are certain of the player they need and how they will fit into what they already have.

Last summer, for instance, Liverpool made Alisson Becker the most expensive goalkeeper in the history of the sport. But the £67 million addition filled a gaping hole in their team. Six months before that they paid £75 million for Virgil Van Dijk. Now, that fee doesn’t look so steep with the Dutchman one of the favourites to win this year’s Ballon d’Or.

Manchester City do the same thing. Rodri cost a lot, but he appears to be a player in the mould of Guardiola’s philosophy and will succeed the ageing Fernandinho as his midfield anchor. These two clubs very rarely make panic buys and very rarely get sucked into the transfer market vortex that engulfs so many others. They are, it seems, above that.

So while City and Liverpool might be essentially the same as they were last season, that shouldn’t threaten their place at the top of the English game. In fact, it could strengthen it further. While many of their rivals will be reliant on new signings bedding in, with Unai Emery, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Mauricio Pochettino all building their airplanes while flying them, City and Liverpool won’t have that problem.

The Premier League has never been such a duopoly before. Even in the days of Arsenal vs. Man Utd, Arsene Wenger vs Sir Alex Ferguson, the two rivals were never as closely matched as they are now. After last season it might not be wise to predict a true title race, one with the archetypal twists and turns of such a contest, but it’s difficult to envisage City and Liverpool’s supremacy being broken.