Liverpool are playing like it’s a title run-in, but will Jurgen Klopp’s side sustain their momentum?

The same nervous energy that filled Anfield during the spring has survived the summer and it is still there now

Shortly after the final whistle had sounded at Anfield, not long since James Milner’s match-winning penalty, Jurgen Klopp strode up in front of his supporters and performed the ‘fist pumps’: three air punches aimed indiscriminately into the Kop, who absorb each blow and respond with a short, sharp roar.

A regular sight during the title run-in last season, the routine was not supposed to be aired so early in the new campaign. “I forgot that I don’t do that anymore,” Klopp said sheepishly in an Anfield corridor some time later. The drama of Saturday’s last-gasp victory over a stubborn Leicester City had got the better of him.

But who could blame him? In the current climate, draws are the new defeats. Defeats represent full-scale disaster. Liverpool’s battle with Manchester City over the last year-and-a-bit has been like that film about a bus that had to speed around a city, keeping its speed over fifty, and if its speed dropped it would explode. This is ‘The Title Challenge That Couldn’t Slow Down’.

Such a small margin for error breeds anxiety. There were times during the win over Leicester – particularly between James Maddison’s late equaliser and Milner’s even-later penalty – when you had to remind yourself that there are not eight games to go but a full eight months. The same anxious, expectant energy that filled Anfield during the spring survived the summer. It is now October. It is still there.

It shows not sign of abating, not even after Liverpool’s eighth consecutive win of the season was followed by City’s second defeat – unexpectedly, at home and at the hands of Wolverhampton Wanderers. The eight-point lead Klopp’s side established on Saturday afternoon was still an eight-point lead by Sunday evening. You feel that will only cause more anxiety, more agitation, more hope and more excitement.

Eight games in, it already feels like a title run-in is underway. Every game is important, every point significant, any slip-up damaging. “It’s true. It’s our life,” Klopp said on Saturday, when this was put to him. “That’s how it is. All or nothing.” He was speaking before City’s defeat but even with the champions struggling, it is likely that Liverpool will need a lot of points. More than 90, probably. They need to be close to perfect.

The fear on a match day at Anfield is that they will fall short once more. It was there before Maddison’s equaliser on Saturday, in the palpable unease around the ground. It was there after it, in the desperate search for a winning goal. It was still there following Milner’s penalty, when one Liverpool official sat in the press seats clasped his hands and held them closely to his mouth, almost in prayer that there would be no further twist.

From here, City’s best hope of retaining their crown may be that Klopp, his players or even just the Anfield crowd collapse under the weight of this nervous energy, exhausted by it. Think back to the 83 seconds that Liverpool spent with a two-point lead at the top of the table on the final day of last season. Those moments were filled with confusion, bewilderment and chaotic joy. It was not entirely helpful.

And then there is the fact that, at this stage, eight points is hardly too big a gap to bridge. City closed a seven-point margin with less time on the board last season. Others will remember how Manchester United were nine clear at this point during the 1985-86 campaign. Liverpool would win their 16th league title that year, finishing 12 points clear of Ron Atkinson’s early pace-setters.

But times change, expectations shift and the significance of City’s poor start should not be underplayed. It comes in a climate where every minor setback is a costly one and only three points each week is deemed good enough. That is the near-impossible standard Pep Guardiola’s side have set over their last two marvellous title-winning campaigns. It is one that Liverpool – and at the moment, only Liverpool – are matching.