I'm amazed that City haven't dropped points so far.
A month or 2 ago I though 93 points would be enough. There's a genuine possibility that 97 points might not be enough now.
If I had to guess though I don't think both teams end up winning all the remaining league games and give the 97 points versus 98 points scenario. I still wouldn't be surprised if both teams drop points between now and the end of the season.
I didn't know how I did it, but at the start of the season, I just had it in my mind that 98 would be the magic number this season. So, I started putting our fixtures against the exact results that would make us get to 98 & the obvious route to it was 8 draws.
You may ask me why I didn't factor any losses, but the way we were playing for the 1st two months of this season, it didn't look like any team could outplay us & by the strength we've grown this season, we've also grown the skill of winning while not playing to our full ability. So, I genuinely thought we could keep it to 8 draws and get to 98 points. And the games I scratched off as games we could afford to draw in the order of our fixtures were Chelsea Away, Man City Home, Arsenal Away, Man United Home, Man City Away, Man United Away, Everton Away & one Spurs Home or Chelsea Home.
We went above expectations when we got to Man City Away, but that is one game where had we gone undefeated, we'd have been winning the league with comfort by now. Although I can't fault our effort in that game, we were brilliant, I had never see Man City be so scared in the own patch like they were in the last 15 minutes of that game, they genuinely parked the bus. They cleared everything that came at them. I had never seen Man City play like that in years. That rebound from Mane (clearance by Stones) had a margin of mms there. That was brutal to take, but I was still confident that we'd do it, because we won against Man United at Home (a game I scratched off as a draw for obvious reasons - rivalry, so I wanted less pressure on us in this game, Mourinho could be show spoiler, so we could take less risks in that game & Man United is one side against whom we have a bad record at Anfield. This game worked out better for us than I thought it would).
The real spoilers were the Leicester & West Ham games, but I was half expecting a bad patch in those months as we went through a rigorous December and the next couple of months uneven in terms of rest period. It took away our rhythm a bit. We went behind our target at that point of time, but since City also lost games and after their Newcastle loss, I was quite sure that the number has come down to 95 points. We couldn't make up for those draws by wining against one of Man United or Everton in the Away games, so I wasn't sure we'd even make the 94-95 that I though should be enough. At that point, I thought we'd make 93 points & fall 1 or 2 points short of Man City.
But then both teams stepped up their games in remarkable fashion (us winning against both Spurs & Chelsea & City negotiating some of their banana skins), and now the magic number is back to 98 again. 98 is possible - our best case is 97 & not so best case seems 95. So, what we need to do is achieve our best case & then see if Man City don't achieve their best case, thereby the magic number drops to 97.
In any case, we have done remarkably well to come this close to the magic number 98 points I had in mind at the start of this season & that meant there were no margin for error at all. We went past Man United Home, Spurs Home & Chelsea Home targets, but we fell short in 3 games - Leicester Home, West Ham Away & more importantly Man City Away, where we were infinitesimally close to getting the draw that we needed to get.
