Manchester City are arguably the most dominant English team we've seen since Jose Mourinho's first Chelsea team of 2004/05. They finished the season 12 points clear of second-placed Arsenal, and set a record for the number of wins in a single season (29) and goals conceded (an absurdly parsimonious 15). City will probably beat that win record - they have 27 already, with six games still to go, and can win the title this weekend, which would be the most efficient Premier League title win ever.
Like Chelsea in 04/05, City they pretty much have the league wrapped up, and are ready to pop it in a trophy cabinet beside the league cup picked up earlier in the season. Over the next eight days, however, Pep Guardiola will hope the comparisons with that Chelsea side stop there.
Chelsea missed out on a treble as they were knocked out of the Champions League at the semi-final stage by eventual (and improbable) winners Liverpool; Chelsea's adamantine defence foundering amid a seething atmosphere at Anfield.
City meet Liverpool a round earlier and with the trip to Anfield in the first-leg rather than the second, and Guardiola must hope that history will not repeat itself for champions-elect dressed in a lighter shade of blue.
With all of this in mind, let's cast an eye back at that Liverpool team that shocked Chelsea courtesy of a highly, highly dubious goal.
Jerzy Dudek
Weeks later, Dudek would rescue a Liverpool legacy steeped in mediocrity by his final heroics. His wobbly legs presaged a famous penalty save from Andriy Shevchenko to seal the cup from Liverpool, and was responsible for sending for getting that far owing to a kind of miracle save from Shevchenko at the end of extra time.
It led George Hamilton to declare on RTE that Liverpool's name was surely on the cup. That proved to be the case, and after spending a season as second-choice to Pepe Reina, Dudek went into a kind of luxurious semi-retirement at Real Madrid. He was second-choice to Iker Casillas and played just two league games in four years at the Bernabeu.
Dudek moved back to Poland following retirement, and in 2014, he completed his first season racing in the Volkswagen Castrol Cup, a racing championship held in circuits around Eastern Europe during the summer months.
Steve Finnan
Few former Irish internationals have kept as low a profile as Finnan. Rafa Benitez tried to offload him in the doomed pursuit for the supposedly-better-than-Xabi-Alonso-Gareth Barry, but he ended up leaving Liverpool for Espanyol in 2008, where he spent an injury-plagued season. Finnan returned to English football in 2009 with Portsmouth, with his final appearance for the club coming in the FA Cup final defeat to Chelsea.
After retirement, he spent time in Gambia working on irrigation projects, before returning to London to work in property development. Ahead of the tenth-anniversary reunion of Liverpool's Champions League-winning squad, Finnan couldn't be tracked down. The organisers launched #FindSteveFinnan on Twitter, and they eventually found him in London. Finnan confirmed to the Liverpool Echo that he was fine.
I can confirm that I'm safe and well Someone forwarded the Echo article on to me yesterday. I thought it was funny as I normally think I'm pretty easy to get hold of.
There are people at the club who have got my number but obviously this isn't a club event so there was a bit of a mix-up.
Jamie Carragher
Carragher stayed at Liverpool and retired in 2013. Having scored on his debut, the defender came agonisingly close to bookending his career with a goal against QPR - smashing a long-range volley against a post in front of the Kop. Carragher retired and became a pundit with Sky Sports with whom he built a good reputation, until....
He is suspended from the broadcaster for the rest of the football season, having been filmed spitting at a father and daughter goading him on a motorway following Man United's victory over Liverpool.
Sami Hyypia
Hyypia left Liverpool in 2009, and finished his career at Bayer Leverkusen. He has since gone on to forge a decent coaching career. He spent a year as an assistant coach with the Finland national team, and then took over at Leverkusen. He took them to third in the Bundesliga and into the Champions League group stages for 2013/14, but was dismissed toward the end of the season following a run of one win in nine games.
Hyypia then took over at Brighton, and having reached the championship playoffs in his first season, they tailed off horribly, and he left toward the end of 2014 with the club in the relegation zone. He got another chance at FC Zurich in 2015, but was fired late in the season with the club in relegation difficulty. They ultimately went down.
Djimi Traore
In 2014, Traore came out with one of the most inspiring quotes in football history.
I know I was not the best but I certainly tried my hardest and I’m very proud because in winning the Champions League I achieved something that few people have
Within the space of a few months in 2005, Traore went from blundering a comedy own goal against Burnley to winning the biggest prize in the game. He lived a peripatetic life after leaving Liverpool in 2006, playing at Charlton, Portsmouth. Rennes, Birmingham, Monaco and Marseille, before ending his career with Seattle Sounders in the MLS.
He retired in 2014 and is now working as an assistant coach with the club. The highlight of his time in Seattle is undoubtedly this howitzer:
Didi Hamann
Hamann is the member of this squad who has forged the strongest friendship with Eamon Dunphy in retirement. He left Liverpool in 2006 and spent a day at Bolton, and then jumped ship to Manchester City. He ended his playing days with MK Dons. Ever since, Hamann has been a regular pundit on RTE, and has struck a friendship with Dunphy as a result, and is a regular guest on Dunphy's podcast, The Stand.
Hamann spent a brief, unsatisfactory spell managing Stockport County in 2012.
Igor Biscan
Biscan became one of the unlikely cult heroes of the Liverpool run to Istanbul and deputised for the suspended Xabi Alonso in the second leg against Chelsea. He left Liverpool with his Champions League winners medal and a chant ("He is a giant of man/He should be playing for Milan") and headed to Panathinaikos, with whom he spent two years before finishing his career with Dinamo Zagreb.
Biscan has gone into coaching since, and is currently the manager of Olimpija Ljubljana. In 2015, Biscan was found guilty of headbutting a taxi driver in Zagreb.
Luis Garcia
It was in this game that Garcia scored one of the most infamous goals in Liverpool's history, with Jose Mourinho still disputing whether his effort actually crossed the line. Garcia left Liverpool for Atletico Madrid in 2007, and played with a host of different clubs before retiring in 2014. He came out of retirement two years later to play a few games with Central Coast Mariners.
Garcia has done some punditry work since, and frequently pops up on foreign junkets undertaken by ex-Liverpool players.
John Arne- Riise
Riise had quite a bit of European history to write with Liverpool in the years after this tie. Ahead of a Champions League clash with Barcelona in 2007, he was attacked with a golf club by Craig Bellamy. Riise then scored and set up Bellamy's winner at the Camp Nou. At the other end of the scale, Riise scored an absurd own goal in the final minutes of the Champions League quarter-final against Chelsea; a tie that Liverpool eventually lost.
The Norwegian continued to play at a decent level for a few years after leaving Anfield in 2008, signing with Roma before returning to play with Fulham three years later.
Riise retired in 2016, and in a recent interview, he recalled how he ran into an old bully after winning the Champions League.
In 2005 I went back to my home city and met in the street some of the guys that bullied me when I was young. I thought 'I can be an idiot, or I can just be smiling and happy', and I was so confident in who I was and what I had done.
One of them worked at McDonald's, and there's nothing wrong with that, but I had just won the Champions League.
So, I went to McDonald's and ordered a Happy Meal by him. I didn't say anything. I recognised him and I know he recognised me. I was just happy and smiley, but I knew in my head I was thinking 'in your face'.
And I walked out a happy man. It was very good for me to come home and get the look on their faces.
Steven Gerrard
Gerrard stayed at Liverpool until 2015, his career ending with the absurd irony of slipping in a Premier League decider against Chelsea, a fortnight after warning his Liverpool teammates that this can't, er, slip.
He finished his career with LA Galaxy, and has since returned to Liverpool to cut his coaching teeth. Having been linked with the top job at MK Dons, Gerrard has stayed with the Liverpool academy, and currently coaches the Under-18s.
He also does a spot of punditry with BT Sport.
Milan Baros
Baros - the top scorer at Euro 2004 - left Liverpool weeks after this tie, joining Aston Villa. Spells at Lyon and Portsmouth followed, before a five-year stint with Galatasaray. Baros then bounced around the Turkish and Czech leagues, and is still playing at the ripe old age of 36 with FC Baník Ostrava.
Substitutes
Antonio Nunez
Nunez arrived in return for Michael Owen, and spent just one season at Anfield. He picked a good year to join Liverpool, scoring in the League Cup final and ultimately picking up a European Cup medal.
He joined Celta Vigo in 2005, and like Baros, is still playing - at 39 Nunez is still turning out for Recreativo Huelva.
Djibril Cisse
Cisse became the most unlikely of Roy Keane signings when the French striker was brought to the Stadium of Light from Marseille, with whom he had been playing with since leaving Liverpool.
Cisse has since shown the kind of inconsistency with retirement decisions as he did with the offside law - having called time on it all in 2015, Cissé returned to football two years later after signing with Swiss side Yverdon.
Harry Kewell
Kewell hung around Anfield until 2008, whereupon he departed for Galatasaray. Having retired in 2014 in his native Australia, Kewell returned to England and has begun tenaciously cutting his teeth in management. Hs first gig was with Watford's under-23s, and he is now the manager at Crawley Town.
