Champs Manchester City, dancing to a Pep tune

In the end, they didn’t even need to be there. Manchester City were that good.

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Impressive for much of the season, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal were shown how tough it is to even keep up with the serial Premier League winners, first by Brighton and then at Nottingham Forest.

Relentless, remorseless, resolute, Pep Guardiola’s team is an awe-invoking football machine that has bagged the world’s toughest league thrice in succession and is one win in Europe away from joining the great club sides of all time.

Irrespective of what happens in Istanbul, or in the FA Cup final, Guardiola’s position as one of the all-time great managers, one whose interpretations of the game have changed the way the world perceives football, is secured.

For the second season in a row, City have scored over 90 goals. This time, while yoked to 115 charges of financial foul play. It would have made many teams baulk. City bristled; Guardiola summoning every ounce of siege mentality he could. En route to the title, phenomenal goalscorer Erling Haaland was integrated into the team, new positions for players discovered, the torpor on either side of the World Cup shaken off and by May as Arsenal’s run was petering out, City were purring. They could end up with four of the top seven points tally in Premier League history.

For only the second time – and adjusting with three points for a win, this can be stretched back to 1888-89 – has a team not won the league after accumulating 50 points at the halfway stage. What City did to Arsenal this time, they had done to Liverpool in 2018-19.

“If they slip, we have to be there.” Juergen Klopp was referring to Newcastle and Manchester United while talking about Liverpool’s top-four push. What he said has been City’s mantra all season. With a game in hand, Arsenal were five points ahead at 50 after 19 games. They were eight in front after the 4-1 win against Leeds United. Yet, City never gave up.

Two wins against Arsenal helped. The first in February showed a different side to Haaland, one who was a lot more mobile in the front third. The second was masterclass; Arsenal being picked apart, the exhaustion of trying to stay in the race telling on them as did their lack of squad depth. It ended a run of four games where Arsenal dropped nine points and City didn’t need a second invitation.

“The one thing I would say that makes him different to others is that he has won everything, but it’s like he hasn’t won anything…Every season he starts all over again. That’s his biggest quality,” City defender Ruben Dias told Norwegian channel TV2 after the Champions League semi-final win against Real Madrid. Dias was talking about Guardiola who now has as many league titles as Matt Busby and Tom Watson, five. Only Alex Ferguson, George Ramsey and Bob Paisley have more.

In 14 managerial years, Guardiola has won 11 league titles. As if to compensate for winning nothing for 35 years till 2011, City have won five of the last six Premier League seasons. Guardiola has been at the front and centre of that run. Speaking to The Athletic, former Argentina and Real Madrid star Jorge Valdano said Guardiola was the soul of the team.

Under him, City have evolved. Guardiola’s obsessive desire for control means City prefer possession but goalkeeper Ederson’s ability to find a teammate with a raking long ball too is encouraged. And from a team that relied on false nines after Sergio Aguero, City have accommodated Haaland who has already broken the long-standing league record of most goals in a season. Going into Sunday’s game against Chelsea, he had 36.

Haaland is a City fan who told FourFourTwo that he remembered Aguero’s dramatic goal that won them the league in 2011-12 “like it was yesterday.” Guardiola was one reason why he joined City, a £51m transfer being another, he said. None of that obviated settling-down pangs.

In their urge to get the ball to Haaland, City left space at the back. Till Guardiola found the balance right. Making John Stones an extra midfielder, playing five attacking midfielders, with Bernardo Silva as left-back, against Arsenal, another. Playing four centre-backs was a third because it gave City verve in the middle and front thirds. Getting Haaland to be more involved was a fourth. “I don’t want him to score goals and the rest I don’t care,” Guardiola had said. So, against Bayern Munich in the Champions League quarter-final, Haaland provided an assist Kevin de Bruyne would have been proud of.

That brings us to De Bruyne. Going to Arsenal in February, De Bruyne hadn’t scored in 13 games. A left foot lob corrected that but in March, Guardiola benched him urging the midfield wizard to do the “simple things right”, such as not losing the ball and staying in the moment. De Bruyne responded with three goals and five assists in the next four league games. And he scored again against Arsenal. After 2019-20, the Belgian will again end the league with most assists (it was 16 before Sunday).

Guardiola saw enough in Rico Lewis to give the City academy product a Champions League game and he got Julian Alvarez, who won a World Cup as a striker, to play in midfield against Everton and Leeds. In his second season, Jack Grealish understood better what it takes to play for City – the wide player has worked on his defending. In De Bruyne, Haaland, Grealish and Bernardo Silva, City have players who can draw attention and create space for others. Yes, Guardiola has quality on his roster to the point that Phil Foden can make guest appearances and Kalvin Philipps not even that. Yes, City are backed by state but as Paris St-Germain have showed, that is not always enough.

In 2018, Klopp, speaking of City, had said: “I have to say it, there’s no sign of weakness.” It is difficult to dispute that even now.