The Rebound: Man City and Liverpool's dramatic draw shows exactly where the Premier League title is heading

I don't care for change. I, like many of you reading this article, am a creature of bad habit, quite comfortable nestling in the folds and ruts of my routine, wary of disruption, and warier still of the unexpected. Imagine my chagrin, therefore, when I found out - moments before the first whistle, no less - that Saturday's lunchtime kick-off between Manchester City and Liverpool would be shown on Sky Sports and that I, rather unwillingly, would be plunged into my weekend by the exuberant faux verbosity of Peter Drury, like a sickeningly cheery English teacher doing the wake-up call on an outward-bound school trip.

In the end, the poet laureate of the gantry had little to pontificate on. Erling Haaland scored, as he is prone to do, Trent Alexander-Arnold, in his fancy new Predators, stole an equaliser and shushed the Etihad - which is a little like stamping on a smashed plate - and in between the champions had a couple of goals ruled out for varying degrees of goalkeeper assault. ('None whatsoever' counts as a varying degree, right?)

Ultimately though, this was to be a sharing of the spoils, and one that you suspect meant an awful lot more to Liverpool than their hosts. Come May, as if often the case these days, City will likely have ran away with the title to some extent, but with the Reds seeming more like their old selves, and with the likes of Arsenal, Aston Villa, and up until about a three weeks ago, Tottenham, all looking fairly competitive, this could be the most intriguing Premier League trophy hunt in a hot minute. And hey, if it does somehow end up in a dead heat, at least we can chuck Darwin Nunez and Pep Guardiola into an octagon somewhere to iron things out once and for all.

Elsewhere, Alejandro Garnacho arrived at Goodison Park, and within three minutes, scored the kind of goal that defies description. Which, admittedly, is a bit of a pain for those of us who are paid to describe such things.

The stats boffins in their starched white lab coats somehow determined that the Manchester United winger's sublime overhead kick against Everton on Sunday afternoon merited an xG of 0.08, but honestly, that feels a little high. Give Garnacho 100 opportunities at recreating that goal and he doesn't manage it eight times. Hell, give him 100,000 and he might not do it again even once. This was a strike that hit the back of the net and immediately booted the padlock off the door to the pantheon of the Premier League's greatest ever efforts. It's just a shame that he celebrated his screamer with a muted imitation of Cristiano Ronaldo's infamous 'SIUUUU!!!' - the footballing equivalent of concluding a Michelin-starred meal with a cheeseboard consisting purely of Dairylea triangles and little squeezed mounds of Primula.

As for Everton, you have to feel for them. The Toffees used Sunday's fixture as a platform to vocally protest the recent 10-point deduction handed down to them by the Premier League, and within 150 seconds they found themselves on the stinging end of a whip-crack moment of unadulterated Barclays heritage. Still, there were reasons for them to be relatively positive. For one, the Blues created plenty of chances, and were it not for a tragicomic glut of wayward finishes, they may well have made a better go of things against the Red Devils. For another, this is a club that, despite the adversity they now find themselves in, are evidently up for the fight. That won't be enough to drag them clear of danger by itself, but it certainly won't hurt their survival prospects either.

And finally, to Burnley, and more specifically, manager Vincent Kompany, who continues to do a remarkably nuanced impression of that limbless knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Last week, the Belgian gave a press conference in which suggested that he thought the Premier League would have been a 'harder' challenge for his squad when it comes to trifling matters like maintaining belief and morale. Hell, if they were anything other than bottom of the table with four points from 13 matches, perhaps Kompany would be having to invent novel new ways of stopping his lads from getting too giddy.

Presumably, then, Saturday's stoppage time sucker punch of a defeat at the hands of West Ham represented nothing but a scratch to the Clarets, who looked destined to secure a second win of the campaign before Dara O'Shea put the ball in his own net and Tomas Soucek floated in at the back stick like an untethered blimp to volley home a winner. And while, facetiousness aside, Kompany's man-management prowess is an admirable trait, the longer this inability to scrape together results lingers, the more you fear for his newly-promoted side.

Next up, a clash against fellow doldrum-dwellers Sheffield United which has now taken on the distinct hue of a musical chairs contest in an active volcano. Or as Vincent probably calls it, a cosy fireside snuggle.