Liverpool have made the remarkable normal – we may never witness anything like it again The title race isn’t much fun but watching this team dismantle rivals without wavering from their philosophy is a spectacle to behold

Whenever an elite sports team reaches the peak of its power, there becomes a stage when their majesty becomes normalised beyond reason. Or, to translate, we bypass the stage of wondering whether they will win and attention turns to how many they will win by. The enjoyment of sport as a neutral is defined by competition. So expectations must shift to create manufactured jeopardy.

When the US basketball team went unbeaten between 1992 and the Sydney Olympics, NBC only broadcasted their matches from Australia on delay because the results were a certainty. When they beat Lithuania by nine points in a group stage match, the shock was that a professional US team had failed to win by a double-digits score for the first time in history. Only after another close semi-final victory over the same opponents did NBC alter the scheduling to broadcast the final live. Suddenly, jeopardy fuelled added interest.

Jurgen Klopp has reached the same point. After Liverpool beat Norwich City 1-0 to establish a 25-point lead at the top, Klopp admitted that victories were becoming so commonplace that they barely merited mention in the dressing room: “The gap is so insane, I don’t really understand it. I go back into the changing room and we chat about things and then I am like ‘Oh, but congratulations. We won the game, another three points.’”

Does that make Liverpool’s matches less interesting for the neutral? Perhaps. It is still absorbing to see just how early they will win the title and how many points they will win it by. Watching Virgil van Dijk defend and their front three dart and dash could never be dull. Witnessing them dismantle supposed title rivals without wavering from their philosophy is a guaranteed spectacle to behold. But the sheer inevitability of the end result does erode some enjoyment. Another week, another win.

Three points at Carrow Road took Liverpool to 76 points, more than Manchester United managed in their entire title-winning season in 1996-97. Liverpool need to avoid dropping more than 11 points in their final 12 matches to break the Premier League points record. They have dropped 10 in their last 43 matches.

This Liverpool assault has been founded upon their relentlessness against the Premier League rest. Since losing to Swansea in January 2018, they have played 48 league matches against non-Big Six teams and won 42 of them, drawing the other six. Add in an unusual scenario where every other member of that Big Six is either undergoing a transition or looks in need of one, and you might conclude that things have fallen wonderfully into place.

But do not allow that to mask all praise for Klopp’s work. Liverpool have the second highest wage bill in the country, but it is still lower than Manchester United. Klopp’s peers are not short of pocket money and Manchester City’s resources created an obstacle that appeared unsurmountable 12 months ago.

This isn’t the stuff of fairytale, but that’s only because fairytales require a sprinkling of magic. You don’t need magic when you have an off-field structure that allows an iconic manager the freedom to create a team in his own image, a recruitment strategy based on selling players for the right price and reinvesting intelligently and a group of exceptional players motivated by the opportunity to create history and atone for falling agonisingly short last season.

So if all jeopardy has evaporated from the final three months, you will forgive Liverpool for not caring a jot.

Their supposed peers deserve censure for an inability to avoid inconsistency or incompetence, but Klopp’s team have trained themselves to sprint the marathon. We have witnessed nothing like this ever before, and may never do so again.