After a fifth English Premier League title in six seasons, it’s surely time to ask: Are Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City the greatest English team of all time? We will have a conclusive answer in the next three weeks, after they take on Manchester United in the FA Cup final and Internazionale of Milan in the Champions League’s summit clash. For now, suffice to say that they’re right up there with the best to have played the game.
The raw numbers are astonishing. Assuming that City win two of their three remaining league games, it will mark the fourth time that they finish the season with more than 90 points. Their lowest tally to win a title under Guardiola is 86 points is 2020-21, which is still seven more than Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United managed in their treble season (1998-99).
If you just skimmed through those numbers, you’d think City dominated because there was no competition. That couldn’t be further from the truth. They have put this incredible sequence together while seeing off the challenge of Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, who would have sauntered to at least three titles in any other era.
In the greatest league season ever, in 2018-19, the two traded blows like heavyweight boxers before City finished with 98 points to Liverpool’s 97. The following season, Liverpool took the title with 99 points, just one less than City’s record haul in 2017-18. And as recently as last year, City needed a stunning Ilkay Gundogan-inspired comeback against Aston Villa on the final day of the season to edge Klopp’s side out by a point – 93 to 92.
There’s little doubt that Guardiola inherited the spine of a great team. Vincent Kompany, Fernandinho, Kevin de Bruyne and Sergio Aguero were all there when he arrived in the summer of 2016 to take over from Manuel Pellegrini. But over the course of his reign, he has reshaped the side to play exactly as he wanted them to.
Gundogan has been a key player, as have Bernardo Silva and Riyad Mahrez. Gabriel Jesus led the line admirably for half a decade, before City upgraded by picking up the fearsome Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund. Kompany has been replaced by Ruben Dias, while Rodri patrols the midfield spaces that were once Fernandinho’s terrain.
3-In-A-Row for #ManchesterCity and 5th in 6 years!!
After Arsenal’s 1-0 defeat at Nottingham Forest, Pep Guardiola’s men became the champions officially.
They will lift the trophy after Sunday’s match vs Chelsea.
📸 @ManCity#PremierLeague #ManCity pic.twitter.com/ZHfugqJgeX
— RevSportz (@RevSportz) May 20, 2023
Jack Grealish came in from Villa to add a bit of unpredictability and sparkle, and after an uncertain start, has been a key player in the surge towards the treble. City’s critics will always point to the depth of the resources that the Abu Dhabi Football Group have made available, but you only have to look at how pathetically run Chelsea are right now, and United were for a decade, to realise that vast riches are no guarantee of success.
City have done absolutely everything right on the football side of things. They identified the kind of team they wanted, and the brand of football they wished to see. Ferran Soriano and Txiki Begiristain came from Barcelona in 2012, and had a few years to lay the foundations of future success. Begiristain has been Guardiola’s teammate in the legendary Barcelona teams coached by Johan Cruyff. Once Guardiola became available in 2016 after a three-year stint with Bayern Munich, the project was complete.
It now looks unstoppable. The manner in which City played Real Madrid – the Real of Luka Modric, Toni Kroos, Karim Benzema, Vinicius Junior and so many others – off the park during a 4-0 drubbing that could so easily have been worse was frightening to watch.
The only other English sides to win five in six seasons were Liverpool between 1978-79 and 1983-84, and Ferguson’s United between 1995-96 and 2000-01. Bob Paisley’s Liverpool team overcame the disappointment of missing out on the treble in 1976-77 – United beat them 2-1 in the FA Cup final – by adding three European Cups to the five titles in that era of absolute dominance. Paisley left in 1983, but Joe Fagan, who won the league, League Cup and European Cup in his first season, had been part of the coaching staff for decades. It was very much business as usual.
Ferguson rebuilt his team in the summer of 1995, getting rid of stalwarts like Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis and Mark Hughes. Instead of ‘winning nothing with kids’, as Alan Hansen had suggested on television, he went on to win everything, including the treble in 1999.
For Guardiola and City, that truly is the final frontier. Win in Europe, and this team is immortal.