Manchester City have been crowned Premier League champions for an unprecedented fourth time in a row. They go into the record books after beating West Ham 3-1 at the Etihad stadium. It is a remarkable feat: never in 135 years of English league football has a club won four consecutive top-flight titles.
City can arguably lay claim to be the greatest team in the league’s history. They have an FA Cup final to look forward to next weekend, a game in which they are hot favourites to sweep aside a dysfunctional and underperforming Manchester United. That would be a cup and league double on the heels of the remarkable Treble last year that also included their Champions League win. Even the greatest teams can drop off a level the season after reaching the greatest heights – not City though, there was no hangover this season.
It is awesome, unprecedented and – whisper it – just a trifle stupefying
The club let the captain Ilkay Gundogan depart for Barcelona last summer, alongside Riyad Mahrez who went to the Saudi Pro League. The up and coming Cole Palmer was sold to Chelsea. Kevin De Bruyne was out for five months of this season due to a hamstring injury. Erling Haaland missed two months due to a foot injury. No matter. Guardiola, undoubtedly the finest coach in the world, perhaps of all time, squeezes every last drop out of his players.
Their desire to win, again and again, season after season, is remarkable: they have now won six of the last seven Premier League titles. Who can bring an end to their suffocating stranglehold on the league? No one it would seem. There is, of course, the matter of the 115 charges over alleged financial rule breaches. If proven these would be the greatest offences committed by a club in the history of the Premier League, another record of sorts. City have always vociferously denied any wrongdoing, and the saga rumbles on.
What City’s latest triumph means for the Premier League as a competition is the bigger question. After all, the league sells itself as the best in the world: thrilling, competitive and unpredictable to the end. How can such claims be squared with City winning the competition year after year? Even Manchester United, in their long period of Premier League dominance under Sir Alex Ferguson, didn’t exert quite this grip on the competition. The era of United’s successes was perpetually threatened by fierce rivalries, firstly with the great Arsenal teams managed by Arsene Wenger, and then the Chelsea of the Jose Mourinho era. Title races of old were dominated by mind games, touchline spats and explosive press conferences. It is something else altogether with City, more of a stately procession, somehow expected and inevitable.
Guardiola oversees everything with the serenity of a serial winner who has seen it all before. City haven’t lost a league game since December. Even when they’re losing during a match, there is an expectation that they will pass their opponents to death and win in the end. It is not so much footballing blood and thunder, more a methodical and stifling control that crushes the life out of opponents. It has made them one of the hardest teams to beat in the history of football. In theory, Arsenal ran them close this season, taking the title race to the wire on the final weekend. In the event, Arsenal beat Everton 2-1 at the Emirates but it was not enough. The destiny of the title was ultimately in City’s control. No one honestly expected any other outcome, not even the most optimistic and hopeful of Arsenal fans.
The same feeling of monotonous predictability exists at the bottom of the Premier League table: the same three teams that came up from the Championship last year are straight back down. The top eight teams are almost identical to last year. The mush that makes up the middle of the league remains broadly the same. So much for the supposed unpredictability and fierce competition that is the hallmark of the world’s so-called greatest league.
The real thrills, if they can be called that, tend to take place off the pitch, in the seemingly endless disputes about VAR, the antics of the pundits (such as Roy Keane laughably calling Haaland a ‘League Two player’), and on radio phone-ins where fans rage about pretty much everything. It is a parallel football fantasy world of ifs and buts. In the real world, City keep on winning matches. It is awesome, unprecedented and – whisper it – just a trifle stupefying because it shows no signs of ending any time soon. Not until the peerless Guardiola decides to call it a day.
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