Unfortunately for the neutral fans, Manchester City-Liverpool was pretty much punchless

There were no goals. Until the 62nd minute, Liverpool-Manchester City didn’t even produce any shots on goal. The best chance on either side was a penalty kick, missed by City’s Riyad Mahrez. There was nothing that will be remembered a few days from now. There was very little to justify all the hype.

After weeks of buildup and swelling anticipation, Liverpool-Manchester City was a 0-0 dud. After all those hours of foreplay, the main act, the actual game, was a wet fart under the sheets, letting the air out of everything.

When the first act had finally dragged on to the halftime whistle, stateside broadcaster NBC could muster just a pair of highlights. There was Dejan Lovren maybe kicking Sergio Aguero in Liverpool’s box as the Argentine striker was seemingly already going down – a penalty not awarded. And James Milner picking up an injury and requiring an early substitution.

And the way the game began, you’d never have guessed it would all turn so negative.

The Reds made a frantic start in this showdown between the Premier League’s two early leaders, both on six wins and a tie going into the game. They were all over City. The latter’s manager, Pep Guardiola, cut an unusually forlorn figure as his team was overrun and struggled to get the ball out of its own half.

Liverpool hounded and harassed the defending league champions and unsettled them into a litany of early mistakes, freezing City into a rare stasis when in possession. But Jurgen Klopp’s men fashioned just one modest chance out of early charge – a shot cut wide of goal by the still-out-of-form Mohamed Salah.

And then City settled in, stabilized, slowed the game down, took control of the possession and induced a sloppy stalemate.

The second half mirrored the first. Another vigorous Liverpool start. Another City penalty shout as Fernandinho pulled Virgil van Dijk down as his hand happened to strike the bypassing ball. Another no-call, probably rightly.

Mahrez had a pair of shots just after the hour. Salah shanked a long finish on the break, in keeping with his habit in this young season. And then, in the 86th minute, the Algerian missed a penalty, after van Dijk brought Leroy Sane down with a last-ditch challenge by the end-line, when the defender really needn’t have. Finally, the referee painted the spot. But Mahrez airmailed his effort high over Ederson’s goal.

Before then? More turnovers. More miss-delivered passes. More scrappiness.

Ho-hum.

City didn’t seem entirely interested in winning this game. It took a passive approach with the ball. It seemed in a sort of preemptive damage control. You can certainly understand the calculus. If City and Liverpool really are the big title contenders, which may be a tad harsh on a rejuvenated Chelsea, then the visitors will have served their purposes just fine with a point at Anfield.

Liverpool, for its part, ultimately had little incentive to open itself up too much and risk getting carved up by City’s lightning-quick attackers. After all, the club has made its best start in almost three decades.

Two of the most exciting teams in soccer could reasonably have been expected to offer up an hour and a half of scintillating back-and-forth entertainment. Instead, they decided that they were more afraid of the other team’s strengths than they were confident of converting their own into a victory.

That, above all else, was disappointing. The mindset, on both sides, wasn’t to win. It was not to lose.

In the hyper-stratified modern game, most all the talent flows to a dozen or so of the biggest clubs in the world. A handful of them all happen to be in England. Indeed, Mahrez was plainly signed to provide City with depth. He was hardly going to be an automatic starter. Yet at 27, near the end of his prime, City paid an eye-watering $79 million for him. A club record. Just as it signed defender Aymeric Laporte for a similar amount just to sit on the bench in his first season with the club.

So when these mega-clubs now face off head-to-head, it creates such hype and expectation that not every game will satisfy. This era of talent-hoarding in a sport that increasingly separates a super elite from hundreds of pauper clubs has produced some transcendent games. We’ve come to expect it. We want a classic every time a Liverpool faces a Manchester City.

This wasn’t one.

Leander Schaerlaeckens is a Yahoo Sports soccer columnist and a sports communication lecturer at Marist College. Follow him on Twitter @LeanderAlphabet.