Terrace Talk: That sound you hear? Excited Liverpool fans...

Excelling at things over a long period of time can sometimes breed complacency. It is a natural enough progression. If you are in charge of a government, you don’t even have to be brilliant to become

complacent — just ask David Cameron.

Manchester City’s swagger has often bordered on the “don’t worry, we know what we’re doing” look, that gentle patting of the ball to and fro, the turning and the returning, the threading of passes out from the back through gaps that look too narrow to even attempt breathing in.

With the inevitable surge of salacious suggestions that they might be, you know, unbeatable and an equally forceful noise being made about their all-pervading dominance of the Premier League (three titles in 50 years) being a really bad thing, it was considered high time for someone to knock them back into step with the mere mortals of the chasing pack.

Could it be that Maurizio Sarri — who, when asked pre-match how to beat City, stated with disarming honesty that he had never beaten a Guardiola side and therefore “didn’t know” the answer to the question — has stumbled inadvertently on the magic formula?

Let them pass themselves to an imperious standstill, then nip in and score with your only shot of the half just before the oranges are quartered. Thus shaken, stir the pot ferociously with a second half of lung-busting activity.

It felt in that one-way first half like the Italian’s quest for the correct answer would go on for at least another 90 minutes. Then a strange thing happened. City’s first Premier League defeat of the season came to pass against a Chelsea side that had been utterly flattened during an opening period where they seldom saw the ball.

Eavesdropping on the half-time team talks might have brought fascinating insight.

Sarri: “You’re not in this game at all, lads. Carry right on.”

Guardiola: “You’ve been absolutely breathtaking, boys. You must do much, much better.”

And, as ever with the adrenaline pumping, the players blithely ignored the advice. Instead Chelsea modified into a feisty, attacking force, while City retreated into moody shadows and navel gazing.

Meanwhile, the rest of the league has been bequeathed a title race. It may not yet — and may never — fully involve Chelsea, but that high-pitched noise like a pressure cooker exploding scalding soup all over the kitchen ceiling is actually the sound of Liverpool’s support fixing their eyes on the league table. Now, at last, their best-ever league start has a proper reward: First place in the league.

For City, suffocating blankets of possession were not nearly enough on this occasion. A high press that had the jittery home players offloading the ball straight back where it had come from was not enough either. The dancing and prancing of those magical Mahrez feet, those twinkling Bernardo Silva toes, those whirring Leroy Sane legs, didn’t do the trick either. Neither did Raheem Sterling’s forceful dribbling suffice.

By the end, you felt the entire high stepping front line of the Moulin Rouge, equipped with bazookas and Kremlin issue umbrellas would not have made a difference. It was to be Chelsea’s day.

City’s love affair with

passing has become an intoxicating sight. The ball zips and whizzes around as if on an invisible thread. This time that thread had a nasty hairy spider crawling along it. David Luiz, along with Rudiger, Kante, Kovacic, and Jorginho provided a central block of beef and timber that City’s slender-legged imps failed to get through, around, or over. Sarri had found his answer and, like Cameron, City had been ejected from the top spot. Who knows what chaos it might provoke.