It used to be Liverpool and Manchester United. That was the one; the bitter, unmissable rivalry than ran for decades rooted in fierce tribalism, entitlement, and geographical difference.

The managers hated one another and the players responded in kind. The fan-bases loathed the other as an enemy, indeed as ‘other’. It was personal, nasty and downright horrible, which is precisely why the rest of us tuned in enthralled every time they clashed.

That was then, though. That’s now in the past. When the ‘M62 derby’ plays out these days it inevitably ends in a sterile draw, while a minority section of both fan-bases chant despicable taunts across the ground. It is now hatred purely for hatred’s sake; a re-enactment of a time when their coming together was meaningful.

It feels like a broken marriage, where the couple forgot to get divorced and now spend their time bickering about who didn’t put the plates away twenty years ago.

Frankly, Liverpool and Manchester United as a rivalry has incrementally descended into a predictable and tiresome string of familiar insults.

With each taking it in turns to be fading forces a vacuum existed, creating a need for fresh antagonised conflict over and above local derbies with all of their local, petty point-scoring. So it was that Liverpool went after Chelsea hard, viewing them as ‘plastic’ and everything they stood against as the clubs kept on being paired up in Europe.

This was entertaining for a while, it has to be said. There was John Terry and Steven Gerrard on the pitch. Off it Chelsea were all swagger and spouting anti-Scouse cliché, while the Merseysiders enshrouded themselves in authenticity. They were passionate, historic and ‘real’. Chelsea were not.

//fixtureinfocus.podiant.co/latest/embed/

Before we proceed further you may notice that all three examples of non-derby rivalries involve Liverpool and they deserve an enormous amount of credit for that. Sincerely. Football is flashy and hyperbolic but also anodyne at heart and it needs the electric pulse of conflict to thrive, to exist and too rare that is.

Anyway, back to the rivalries and Liverpool and Chelsea that doesn’t really thrive anymore. Liverpool fans hate Chelsea fans, of that there is no doubt, while Chelsea fans will forever sing of Stevie G’s slip. It still feels passe though. Of its time. It’s as dated as New Labour v Tory.

Thankfully there is a new rivalry on the block and better yet it’s one only recognised by one side. That’s a new twist and the best and bitterest of rivalries need twists.

When Manchester City and Liverpool contested the 2013/14 league title, neck and neck the whole way and each scoring so many goals they can both claim to have elevated that season to an entertaining height, City fans only viewed Liverpool with the same degree of hostility they had always reserved for them. By which it’s meant there was nothing exaggerated in their feelings towards their title rivals. Not especially.

[brid autoplay="true" video="278155" player="12034" title="Every Transfer Window EVER"]

But by the time the teams faced off at Anfield near the end of the campaign Blues were beginning to resent the media’s trumpeting of Liverpool’s ‘fairytale’ season. Clearly one club was being portrayed as the big bad spenders, the other as the plucky ‘authentic’ underdog, and it was a romantic misnomer being swallowed wholesale by Reds. Even at this early stage City were being groomed to be Chelsea’s replacement as the embodiment of ‘plastic’ from one half of Merseyside.

The game happened to fall on the 25th anniversary of the Hillsborough tragedy and with City – a few idiots aside of course – having always stood in allegiance with Liverpool over the abhorrent injustices that followed that awful afternoon, it was no surprise to see visiting fans to Anfield impeccably observe the minute’s silence and hold aloft a huge banner that stated their kinship on the matter.

It was pretty shocking, then, when the rest of Anfield booed the City players every time they touched the ball for the ensuing ninety minutes. When Yaya Toure hobbled off injured the crowd cheered loudly. After the game a coach containing City supporters – after their team had lost incidentally – was stoned, causing serious damage.

That lack of appreciation felt like a kick in the teeth that day, which brings us neatly to Sadio Mane’s dangerous lunge that connected squarely with Ederson at the beginning of last term.  It was a high boot that resulted in the City keeper being stretchered off unconscious and the Liverpool striker seeing red. The Reds also saw red, blaming Ederson for, well; you’ll have to ask them what for. All that can be stated for certain is that Liverpool supporters, in the absence of all logic, feel immensely resentful of the incident.

So is that why Liverpool fans hate City? Again, you’d have to ask them, but the response may well be mired in denial. For their sincere claim is that the rivalry between the two clubs is one manufactured by City fans, to make the three times Premier League champions more relevant by attaching themselves to a club that has never won the Premier League.

Their refusal to acknowledge a very modern rivalry is made all the stranger when the Champions League first leg of last season is considered. For Blues it was a huge game of its own merit. For Liverpool it was hyped up to ridiculous levels, to good versus evil, with the good incidentally smashing up City’s team bus so badly a replacement was required to get them home.

So that’s where we all stand right now. City are the new Chelsea. Plastic and obsessed with Liverpool. Liverpool, meanwhile, are obsessed with smashing up coaches while wholly believing they are somehow virtuous and pure in comparison to the rest of modern football.

It’s a rivalry that is only set to worsen as both team challenge for the league this season. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends entirely on your point of view.