For Liverpool and Manchester City, the Premier League title race has reached its tipping point

With ten games to go, this is when any league season goes from long build-up to intense count-down

For a midweek that didn’t actually change the order of the top six in the Premier League, it felt curiously consequential, and really charges this weekend.

All of Liverpool, Arsenal and Chelsea enjoyed satisfyingly convincing victories after different recent difficulties that should help a tone of defiance for what’s to come. The two Manchester clubs could meanwhile take solace from just getting the job done, despite new difficulties of their own. They can at least lean on a proper sense of resolve. Tottenham Hotspur were the club that had recently looked the most convincing and resilient, as they just consistently got the job done themselves, only for that to evaporate in the space of two very tepid matches.

It isn’t exactly the best preparation for a north London derby, and a north London derby that suddenly feels as important as it should be again, precisely because the gap between Spurs and Arsenal has now been cut to four points.

The entire game is now staked on that single weighty prospect: that the gap could be down to one point as we enter the finitely consequently final stretch.

And that’s even before we get to the meaning of the Merseyside derby, or the west London derby.

In that sense, it does feel fitting that such landmark fixtures - with so many levels to them - come this weekend.

Because with 10 games left we’re now properly into it. This is when any league season goes from long build-up to intense count-down. It’s a number that everyone can get their heads around, focusing minds on the job at hand, as Maurizio Sarri made clear after Chelsea’s fine win over Tottenham.

“What is important now is consistency, to fight for 10 matches in a row,” the Italian argued. “Maybe we are not able to win 10 matches in a row, but we'll be able to fight.”

The key factor is the end is in sight, meaning any impressions any teams give have greater weight, and more tangible effects. After a long period when the feeling is the competition is so extended that the effects of any single result can be waved away or made up for, they’re all now running out of the time for that.

Chelsea's victory against Tottenham can be a turning point for Maurizio Sarri (Getty)

This is where a spell of similar results isn’t so much a run of form, but your run-in, perceived as the extents of character when it comes to closing out a season.

This is when a league can be more exciting and entertaining than any cup competition, precisely because so many matches and so many months infuse the last few fixtures with deeper consequence. The pay-off.

It is effectively when the Premier League becomes the final day of a masters, and probably one of the few competitions in sport that compares in terms of dramatic dynamic.

This is also how all at Liverpool hope that Jurgen Klopp’s winter trip to Dubai can have a double effect. This is how Pep Guardiola’s fitness schedules have always been structured, going right back to his early days at Barcelona. Everything is geared to now; the run-in.

And this is why the midweek might yet be so consequential, and why figures within the dressing rooms at Liverpool and Chelsea were willing to hail it as a potential turning point.

Take the title race. After a spell where the leaders had seemed to be losing their verve in such an attritional manner, and where the feeling grew there would be no massive blow-up but instead a gradual blowing of points in frustrating draws, Liverpool exploded in the right way against Watford. This was the Klopp side we’d been conditioned to expect. This was the team that had so suggested greatness could be possible, because of the nature of their performances. This was also a team we hadn’t really seen since December, maybe earlier.

Liverpool romped past Watford in the indomitable fashion of earlier this season (Getty)

It may yet prove a partial parallel with Rafa Benitez’s 2008-09 Liverpool. They did not win the title, but they did - from exactly this point in the campaign - so impressively accelerate. A 2-0 defeat to Middlesbrough on 28 February marked the last time they lost a game, and just the second last time they lost points. They would thereafter win 10 of the last 11, with the fuse really being lit by that match that marked the same 10-game countdown as now: that 4-1 win away to Manchester United.

The record is actually remarkable. The only reason they didn’t win the title, well, was because they were just up against a side capable of similar… and better. The Tiger Woods of Premier League history. What may have been Ferguson’s best ever United side responded to rare successive defeats against Liverpool and Leicester with seven successive victories. The next day they dropped points, a 0-0 against Arsenal, was enough to actually clinch the title. Remarkably, United in all won 19 of their last 22 games.

The worry for Liverpool is whether they’re up against similar in City now, but the worry for City was the midweek.

Without Fernandinho, and with so many other injuries, they did look nervous. They looked off. And overshadowing all of this is the overwhelmingly intense fixture schedule they could have coming up.

Hence an away trip to a notionally forgiving challenge like Bournemouth could be just right to set things right… or it could really emphasise a few issues right now.

Hence Everton’s own sudden upturn in form is just as relevant. After a period where they couldn’t seem to put together a proper performance, let alone claim a point, they looked impressively together again just in time for a derby they are desperate to win.

They know the potential effects of it, what it might do for them, what it might do for Liverpool, what it might do for the run-in.

Amidst all of this, and everything charging up, there were the conspicuous comments of the manager now most needing that next win.

“It’s about being calm,” Pochettino said on Wednesday. It won't change my assessment of the players. We need to support them, lift them and help them to compete on Saturday.”

That’s easier said than done, now that the difficulty of every game ratchets up