The planning had been meticulous, of course. Flags bearing the word ‘cheats’ and images of Pep Guardiola and Manchester City’s players as convicts were going for a fiver from stalls next to The Park pub. People responded to the message, circulating all week, about meeting at the King Harry pub ahead of a ‘greeting’ for the City team bus. ‘Bring flags, pyros, flares,’ it said, and they did.But inside those pubs, there was neither triumphalism, nor a particular desire to raise holy hell on the visiting team, just a bleak and resigned sense that the football combat which is supposed to belong to 4.30pm on an Anfield autumn Sunday had given way to utter irrelevance.Virtually everyone willing to be engaged on this subject in The Park mourned a proper honest football rivalry and so much time lost on the one they had always thought was real.‘You can’t turn things back and go to the ifs, buts and titles that might have been,’ said Dave. ‘It’s the wasted time, isn’t it? I’ve been bringing my boy here for eight years and I ask myself how much of that counts now.’Supporters like this want to feel they have belonged to a contest which resonates down the ages and some of them actually talked, with sentiment, about Liverpool’s Manchester United clashes of the Sir Alex Ferguson era.God knows that rivalry crossed the line of decency at times, with minorities of each side’s fanbase using the other’s tragedy to mock them. Liverpool fans gathered outside Anfield for a hostile welcome but inside the ground there was little triumphalism Liverpool were exposed for squad limitations – which happens when not playing ‘fantasy football’, as their opposition had done United know all about running a gauntlet of hate as their bus approached this stadium. Bob Paisley was put on their team bus one year in the 1980s, in hope that the sight of him talking to Bryan Robson might quell the hate as it headed up to Anfield. But that was a rivalry built on bricks and mortar, not shifting sands, paid for in pounds sterling, not Abu Dhabi funny money.It was honesty which saw Ferguson knock Liverpool off their perch. ‘Give me that every day,’ was the response when that thought was put to those in the King Harry, a drinking place for generations of Liverpool fans.‘It seems strange to say anything positive about Ferguson and United, but it was about football then,’ said Sam, a student back in his home city to see Liverpool play. ‘We hated them, but they didn’t cheat us.’The young group he was with were not inclined to head out and join the thousands who, by 2.30pm, were gathering around the place on Anfield Road where the front window of City’s coach was shattered by a missile before the Champions League quarter-final first leg in 2018. ‘Doesn’t interest me. No pleasure in that,’ said Sam.To take that walk was to witness the extraordinary spectacle of hundreds standing on sandstone walls, shinning up signposts and hanging out of upstairs bedroom windows to see the City bus and somehow play a part in something. They were photographed, videoed and the gathering became something of a celebrity event, so hundreds of others joined them for fear of missing out. A parallel event took hold and as it did so, you wondered where the game we love had gone.Part of the backdrop to this scene was an image of Bill Shankly, along with his words, which one of the hotels has mounted in red and white. ‘The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards,’ are those words. ‘It’s the way I see football. It’s the way I see life.’ Shankly would certainly not have cherished this day. City fans celebrated their win with abandon but they will probably not be back for a while Liverpool fans felt a sense of resignation about the credibility of what they were watchingAround the back-to-back terraces stretching between The Park and the King Harry were reminders of how much harder growth is when you don’t have a Gulf state’s sovereign wealth fund behind you. Pockets of waste ground are yet to be shaped into something better by Liverpool City Council and the place lacks the opulence of east Manchester, which has been transformed by Abu Dhabi.But when the houses come, they will be homes for local people who badly need them, not swanky flats which price them out, as so much of east Manchester became after the Gulf state was given first voice of lucrative development sites by Manchester City Council.In the Sky Sports studio, Daniel Sturridge spoke about wanting to know where he stood when it came to his 2013-14 season for Liverpool, one about which this club can feel genuinely robbed. But Roy Keane, integral to that purer, honest Liverpool/United rivalry, cut to the underlying pathos of what City’s deceit has left us with. ‘We all want to move on from this,’ he said. ‘This could go on for years and it will ruin the game.’Even on this day, Liverpool were exposed for the squad limitations which come of not having ‘fantasy football’ money, as Jurgen Klopp once described City’s outlay.Briefly, Lewis Koumas almost conspired to script something excellent from the meaninglessness. The 21-year-old, socks around his ankles, was standing pretty much on the spot where Steven Gerrard’s slip against Chelsea handed City the title, 12 years ago, when he raced to receive Bradley Barcola’s pass and hit a fine rising drive. Some story it would have been, for a young Liverpudlian, as Gerrard looked on.But it was Erling Haaland, a player handed a £525,000-a-week, nine-year contract, 21 months ago, who scored instead. Jeremy Doku, a City substitute earning £180,000-a-week under the terms of his new deal, turned the screw.In those days of fair and honest combat, the scoreline would have sent the Anfield crowd away nursing anger and loathing. But those who drifted out on Sunday night seemed at a loss about an irrelevant footnote to a phantom rivalry and a City side who will probably not be here again for some time. There were no winners on this day.