In the end, there was to be no denying Manchester City. No excruciating tension to endure as Brighton & Hove Albion heaved to repel the barrage whipped up by the visitors on the south coast, and no nail-biting finale as news filtered through of Liverpool goals on distant Merseyside.<\/p>\n
What tension that existed here would be lanced a little after the hour-mark. Everything thereafter was a celebration of the champions\u2019 enduring excellence.<\/p>\n
They have been challenged this year, stretched wonderfully by Liverpool\u2019s startling progress under J\u00fcrgen Klopp, but City, with 198 points gleaned across two seasons, have ultimately proved irresistible.<\/p>\n
Pep Guardiola had appeared agitated at times, the perfectionist in him piqued while his team\u2019s lead was still slender.<\/p>\n
But, as Riyad Mahrez skipped back inside to leave Lewis Dunk crumpled on the turf before ripping a glorious right-footed finish into the top corner beyond Maty Ryan, the outpouring was actually one of joy rather than relief. For the first time in a decade, the Premier League had been retained.<\/p>\n
Those on the visitors\u2019 bench spilled out on to the turf, the goalscorer lost in the mess of bodies as substitutes and teammates celebrated.<\/p>\n
They knew there would be no coming back for either Albion or Liverpool from this. Ilkay G\u00fcndogan\u2019s sumptuous free-kick would add further gloss to this latest victory, a 32nd from 38 fixtures this season, with City\u2019s 95th league goal of the campaign.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In the end, there was to be no denying Manchester City. No excruciating tension to endure as Brighton & Hove Albion heaved to repel the barrage whipped up by the visitors on the south coast, and no nail-biting finale as news filtered through of Liverpool goals on distant Merseyside. What tension that existed here would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":77896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77893"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77897,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77893\/revisions\/77897"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}