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Both of the chasers had games in hand — three in Arsenal’s case — but, as far as the bookie was concerned, it was all over.

What happened next should serve as a warning to anyone rushing to declare this season’s Premier League title race a formality now that Manchester City are two points clear at the top.

In 2012 Manchester United moved five points clear of Manchester City with seven games remaining and Done paid out again — only for Manchester United to stutter and hand the initiative back to their neighbours, who ended up securing their first league title in 44 years in the most dramatic circumstances imaginable.



(Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)

The point is that these things happen.

You would have to go back a decade to Steven Gerrard’s and Liverpool’s infamous slip against Chelsea at Anfield in April 2014 to find the last time a team blew a winning position in the final few weeks of a Premier League campaign.

So Done probably felt he was on safe ground when he announced on Monday, less than 24 hours after shock defeats for Liverpool and Arsenal at home to Crystal Palace and Aston Villa respectively, that Betfred was paying out on Manchester City — a £750,000 pay-out with, according to the bookmaker, “no danger”.

But surely the danger — to Manchester City and, by extension, to publicity-seeking bookmakers — is that the margins in this sport are thin and that, at this time of the season, faced with a congested schedule and excruciating tension, slip-ups and setbacks can happen even if, in the era of Pep Guardiola, we have become conditioned to think otherwise.

In a team sport, it can be hard to know when to ascribe mistakes to failures of nerve, concentration, technique or anything else.

Between them they have one win, three draws and five defeats in the last three rounds of matches.

The most infamous “choke” of the Premier League era was Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea.

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Even he struggles, a decade on, to explain whether he lost his nerve, his focus or just his footing.

But what seems certain is that Gerrard and his team-mates appeared “choked” by the setback, the free-flowing football that had taken them to the brink of the title suddenly replaced by self-doubt — both that day against Chelsea and again after the tide began to turn against his team at Crystal Palace eight days later.

The forgotten aspect about the Gerrard slip is that it had taken a series of “chokes”, to one degree or another, to put Liverpool into a position where the league titles was theirs to lose.

Arsenal were top for much of that season but then came a nine-game run that brought two wins, three draws and four utterly chastening defeats (including 5-1 at Liverpool and 6-0 at Chelsea).

But what followed, again somewhat forgotten in Premier League folklore, was a Manchester United blow-up: a defeat at Wigan Athletic and a 4-4 draw at home to Everton (from 4-2 up with seven minutes left).

It is about whether they will rediscover their composure when, almost inevitably, things go awry.

Even Guardiola’s all-conquering Manchester City team, on course for a sixth Premier League title in seven seasons, have found themselves staring into the abyss in the final weeks of title races.

In 2018-19, with Liverpool chasing them right to the wire, they produced a nerve-fraught performance at home to Leicester City in their penultimate game and seemed to be running out of ideas when Kompany, in apparent desperation, let fly from 30 yards and scored the goal of his life with 20 minutes remaining.
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