There have been occasions during recent team meetings when Pep Guardiola has glanced over to Bernardo Silva and Rodri, wondering whether they are bored. Whether the attentive look both wear is a façade.
He wouldn’t blame them. It’s the same messaging as ever was. The pair have sat in that small auditorium on the training ground’s first floor hundreds of times, heard their manager present similar findings over and over again.
But Manchester City’s boss has so many impressionable new recruits that the Guardiola fundamentals aren’t even being reaffirmed at this point, more being taught from scratch. It is why the conversation around what this title race may end up resembling or what the neutrals are expecting is possibly a little skewed.
A prevailing feeling has taken hold over the past week that City are gearing up for one of those exhaustingly long, stifling winning runs that have defined Guardiola’s decade in England. On the television, on the wireless, some sigh when mentioning the inevitability of what will unfold, resigned to a seventh City crown in nine years.
These are people ashen at the memories of Arsenal and Liverpool failing to escape a blood thirsty City but the idea that Mikel Arteta’s side will succumb simply because of the past and its scars ignores the make-up of the current teams involved.
Thirteen of Guardiola’s squad have never been involved in a title race before. Just eight survivors from the Treble campaign, only four of whom are in this year’s most used starting XI. This is City rebuilt, City 4.0 under this manager, new and vibrant, exciting and unpredictable. It is a City that doesn’t possess that muscle memory. The club as a whole does but Jenny in marketing doesn’t take corners.
Nico O’Reilly has been so good in his natural central midfield berth that it likely represents a problem for Thomas Tuchel ahead of the World Cup
Thirteen of Guardiola’s squad have never been involved in a title race before with just eight survivors from the Treble campaign
The finances behind the revamp are sizeable, the quality of those brought in obvious, but it doesn’t alter the fact that these are players learning together, forming new relationships
A transitional City, one that could be argued to being ahead of schedule were they to pip Arsenal this season – the idea of which feeling fanciful at best with performances a few months back. The finances behind the revamp are sizeable, the quality of those brought in obvious, but it doesn’t alter the fact that these are players learning together, forming new working relationships.
They haven’t lived these experiences as a collective and that is obvious, the outpouring at the end all the evidence required. Not a win that will define the title race but you could be mistaken for thinking as such.
At the Etihad Stadium on Saturday night, three days since Wolves nicked that stoppage time point, City were alive. Frenetic, on the edge, Guardiola telling Marc Guehi to calm down when trying a big expansive diagonal that flew straight out of play. Antoine Semenyo and Matheus Nunes embracing as if Nico O’Reilly’s 14th-minute opener was one scored on the final day, not in the middle of February, in a way that spoke to these not being occasions they have ever encountered before. Nunes won the title in 2024 but was barely involved.
Three days off now. ‘What we have to do is take a lot of caipirinhas, daiquiris and enjoy life,’ Guardiola said. ‘And after that, make a proper three training sessions, and go to Leeds.’
The place was feverish, as if the previous league crowns never existed, as if the successes that once felt destined were a figment of the imagination. The evening encapsulated that history is there for them but is no given, never clearer than the sudden descension into silence as Dan Burn headed in an equaliser from a set piece, loud audible relief when the flag went up.
City showed their fallacies, and how opposition can get at them, when Anthony Gordon scampered away from Guehi on the break as the hosts continued operating a line that appeared too high. Gasps as Rodri deflected Lewis Hall’s shot beyond Gianluigi Donnarumma midway through the first half and then the theatre of Erling Haaland standing and admiring his seventh league assist of the season when picking out O’Reilly three minutes before the half-hour.
O’Reilly has been so good in his natural central midfield berth, someone who is now regularly producing real moments of worth on big stages, that it likely represents a problem for Thomas Tuchel ahead of the World Cup. O’Reilly might have been England’s left back until very recently.
For now, he is keeping out Phil Foden and Rayan Cherki and it is not lost on City’s hierarchy that there is another local academy graduate prominent in such a crucial moment in time. ‘What a player,’ Guardiola said. Newcastle had scored their first league goal here since 2018 and City nerves were palpable, Guardiola on his haunches when Hall lined up a threatening free kick or when Anthony Elanga almost galloped by Rayan Ait-Nouri inside the box.
Newcastle had scored their first league goal here since 2018 and City nerves were palpable
City showed their fallacies, and how opposition can get at them, when Anthony Gordon scampered away from Guehi on the break
All of that aided the decibel improvement, as did the late kick off and the likelihood of the bars of Ancoats down the road having been rammed all afternoon. City were not always well-oiled, rather imperfect, and that is the beauty in watching them develop. The old certainties cannot be relied upon; given the upheaval, it would be disingenuous to expect those anyway.
What is clear is that City will understandably drop more points, that Arsenal will drop more points. This run-in ought to resemble a throwback to bygone eras when the bar was significantly lower than the one raised ludicrously by Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp.
And let us revel in it. Eleven matches of nip and tuck to go, stomachs dropping to the tension, the hush of a difficult few minutes, the booms that greet a thunderous Abdukodir Khusanov tackle and the howls when Ait-Nouri fails to finish a counter. City imperious then fragile, clinging on as a unit while a game yawns wide, Donnarumma superbly saving a Harvey Barnes volley in the dying seconds. More of this, please. Whatever it is, more please.
