Another setback for Arsenal, this time against Nottingham Forest (1-0), has solved the Premier League. Despite having three games left (Chelsea this Sunday, Brighton on Wednesday and Brentford next weekend), Manchester City are already champions, claiming their ninth English league title. Seven of these stem from the fact that City Football Group, an Abu Dhabi-based investment company, invested €250m in 2008 to acquire the club and make it the pinnacle of European football. In 2012 he built up the Premier under the leadership of Roberto Mancini and appointed Ferran Soriano as Managing Director for the first time. Almost immediately, Txiki Begiristain arrived at the sports administration. Pep Guardiola was always in the eyes of both and the memory of a team that took Barcelona to the top of world football. Manuel Pellegrini led the team that won the Premier League in 2014 but left the Catalan manager in July 2016 after two consecutive fiascos. Since then, City have dominated the English league with five wins in seven seasons. Expect to spend €1,240m along the way, which is certainly less than what Chelsea, Barcelona or Juventus invested back then and almost on par with what Manchester United, a domestic rival, uncovered on the other hand you have used more than 300 million less for the transfer of players. However, Manchester City has a legal battle with the Premier League, which has charged the company with 115 financial breaches.
Hardly a piece remains of the city that Guardiola inherited seven years ago: Kevin de Bruyne. This summer, Stones and Gündogan joined to begin assembling a squad that has not stopped evolving to transition from known positional play to the ability to strive for superiority that makes it more vertical. The final challenge of bringing Erling Haaland into the team was met with the Norwegian star scoring 36 goals in 33 games and new resources to break through the defense through the long pass and second play. No longer the leader of the false nine, Guardiola has over time expressed his usual penchant for placing dribblers on the wings to open the field with midfielders. The growing weight of Grealish at the expense of Mahrez is an example of this trend.
The city wins and creates a trend. He showed the world that full-backs can take inside positions when setting up a game because Guardiola understands that this is how he wins passing paths and creates space by pulling the opponent’s wingers. At the base of the club, this type of player is already ready. Rico Lewis, just 18 and with a decade of City academy experience, has already proven himself in the role this season. In recent games, that dominance has been sought with the ball in midfield with a central defender, Stones.
“It’s probably the best team in the Premier’s history,” concluded earlier today Mikel Arteta, Arsenal manager who was on the Gunners’ bench after spending just over three seasons alongside Guardiola at City. Since then, their paths have crossed ten times and Arteta has only won in one cup game. This season he has completed the biggest challenge for the champion who has only been at the top for eight days. Arsenal were the rest of the league and even at half-time they had seven points. With only two wins in the last eight days, he was missing a repeat in a final.
The fifth prime minister in six years puts Manchester City in the path of the great dominators of English football: Liverpool, who won seven of the nine championships played between 1975 and 1984, or Manchester United, who did the same between 1992 and 2000. The dominance is also explained by the points standings, because in the last six exercises City have averaged 90.5 points per season (even without finishing the current one), eight points above Liverpool. Manchester United, Arsenal, Tottenham and Chelsea are averaging between 68 and 66 points, more than 20 points behind the Championship’s great dominator. It doesn’t appear that they can get any closer than through profound and considered renewal, which in the case of the Gunners, for example, they are already beginning to achieve.
Arteta, Arsenal manager, at one point in the game. DARREN STAPLES (AFP)
City’s challenge now is to achieve the treble and become the tenth European club to win the league, cup and European Cup or Champions League in the same season. Previously, Celtic (1967), Ajax (1972), PSV Eindhoven (1988), Manchester United (1999), Barcelona (2009 and 2015), Inter (2010) and Bayern (2013 and 2020) narrowly managed it. If the Premier League champions beat Manchester United in the cup final and Inter in the Champions League, Pep Guardiola would become the first manager in history to add two of those triplets.
You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter.