Dubai: Manchester City won’t be overly concerned with Sunday’s 4-3 defeat away to Liverpool, which brought to an end their unbeaten run of 30 Premier League games.

Pep Guardiola’s side are still 15 points clear ahead of second-placed Manchester United’s hosting of Stoke City on Tuesday, and therefore the Sky Blues will need to lose five times in the remaining 15 games to blow the title. It’s not going to happen.

No one behind City looks capable of going on a sustained title charge, and after this blip things will inevitably return to normal.

It is credit to City’s dominance this season that so much is being made of the loss, but beyond a bit a damaged pride it doesn’t mean anything. In fact it’s an ominous sign for City’s rivals as Pep’s side will now regroup and come back stronger for the run in, as well as their bid for European glory.

Why did it happen? Liverpool hadn’t played in 10 days having come into this fixture and had just spent the last week on camp in Dubai, whereas City had only five days off, and they have now played one more game than Liverpool this year, four to Liverpool’s three, due to cup commitments.

It’s no excuse but City’s run was inevitably going to come to an end and it may as well have been at Anfield.

Liverpool were also charged up after the sale of Philippe Countinho and needed to prove that they could still do it without their talisman. That galvanised the squad and gave them an extra incentive against the league leaders.

Add all this into the equation, along with a strong start at home in front of their own impassioned supporters, and City were always going to be playing catch up. In fact they were unlucky not to pull it back to a draw.

Elsewhere, get ready for the Wenger-out rhetoric to ramp up after Arsenal’s 2-1 defeat away to Bournemouth on Sunday. I couldn’t kick my column off with this as I have already called for his departure on one too many occasions, and a weekly Wenger-out section would get somewhat repetitive.

But it now seems as if there’s no choice but to part company with the Frenchman. In the past floating around the top four and winning an occasional FA Cup has saved him after not winning a league title at the club in almost 15 years.

However, they dropped out of the top four — to finish fifth — for the first time in Wenger’s 20 years at the club, last season, and are now sixth and slipping further back after winning just twice in the last nine league games.

The club are going backwards and even if Alexis Sanchez’ departure is confirmed and they bring in a replacement, things don’t look like they are going to improve any time soon. They are out of the FA Cup, so Wenger doesn’t even have that card to save him, and they look unlikely to return to the top four. If they can’t win either the League Cup or the Europa League, it surely has to be curtains for Arsene.