“Being there again” is Pep Guardiola’s mantra and it describes how his Manchester City players recharge relentlessly and return to compete for the big prizes during the manager’s era-defining tenure.
Guardiola’s praise is not for the physical talents of a glittering squad but the ability to retain mental hunger despite serial success. Last year’s treble triumph offered the greatest test yet: could Kevin De Bruyne, Ederson, Kyle Walker, Rúben Dias, Phil Foden, Bernardo Silva, Erling Haaland et al roll up once more for pre-season training, gaze ahead at another nine-month slog with a target on their backs as Europe’s finest side, and continue to be there again?
The answer is a resounding yes – so far, at least. To reach the FA Cup semi-finals, the Champions League quarter-finals and stand a point behind Arsenal as they arrive at the Etihad Stadium for Sunday’s title shootout is another impressive showing.
But City can still falter, which adds a deeper, more resonant dimension to the match. If the Gunners leave Manchester with three points we may have witnessed a discarding of their pretenders tag, and the fascination will be how City’s success-soaked players respond.
A scintillating run of maximum points in the final nine Premier League games would be a defiant riposte but possibly not enough.
The rest of the season would be about Arsenal holding their nerve – and superior goal difference over Liverpool – in a run-in that includes visits to Tottenham and Manchester United. After City, they meet Luton (at home), then Brighton (away), Aston Villa (home), Wolves (away), Chelsea (home), Spurs, Bournemouth (home), United, and close by hosting Everton. Last season’s choke remains fresh in Arsenal’s memory but beating the world champions, on their patch before their own crowd, would be some boost.
Guardiola will use all of his savvy to remind his players of how good and brave they are while steering them through City’s remaining fixtures. These begin with Aston Villa’s visit on Wednesday, then Crystal Palace (away), Luton, Chelsea (home), Brighton, Nottingham Forest (away), Wolves (home), Fulham (away), and West Ham at the Etihad Stadium on the final day, with a trip to Tottenham (postponed for the FA Cup semi-final) to be fitted in somewhere, too. There are also the two Champions League legs against Real Madrid (9 and 17 April) plus a Wembley date with Chelsea (21 April).
This sequence makes this phase of 2023-24 as exhausting and congested as its corresponding one 12 months ago. Is this, then, where the season-upon-season of getting up for the challenge might finally overtake City’s squad? They are human, after all, and every empire starts to decline sometime. Guardiola, however, is the El Jefe (big boss) of this generation due to a restless savant football brain and an expert ability to read his charges and reset their attitude. Often he deploys media briefings to engineer the latter.
Last season, in late January, it was the “happy flowers” diatribe before the run to the treble. This season, after the 1-0 defeat at Aston Villa, it was how he and his group had “lived like a cat” too long. This was classic Guardiola, coming after a run of three draws and a loss as City dropped to six points behind Arsenal. The next 22 matches, and counting, City are unbeaten.
In early December, he gave a reminder of what can happen if results go south. “You are unbeatable and then, you cannot win one game – from nothing,” he said. “Maybe for myself first, I need that challenge to prove myself, that I’m a good manager, to help the players overcome that situation.”
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City’s All or Nothing Amazon documentary showed how intense Guardiola can be. Working under him is a constant, unforgiving challenge, and a core of his headline acts in De Bruyne, Stones, Silva, Foden, Ederson, Walker, Rodri, and Dias have done so for several years. While Foden was in the youth ranks, when Guardiola took over he inherited De Bruyne and bought Stones and they have been drilled by him for seven full Premier League seasons.
De Bruyne has missed 18 games this season because of a hamstring injury suffered in the opening weekend win at Burnley but still has 223 appearances or 16,862 minutes – 75% of the maximum he could have played. Stones, who has sustained more injuries and received less game-time owing to a loss of form, has accumulated 12,054 minutes across 158 games.
Ederson (244 appearances, 21,721) and Silva (224, 15,432), who both joined a summer after Guardiola, lead the chart. Foden, who made his debut at 17 in November 2017, has 157 and 9,167 minutes.
This snapshot of attrition crystallises how remarkable what it is that Guardiola has driven City to do, and it could not be achieved purely with a sergeant-major act. As he says: “It comes from themselves, it’s not a question of motivation – you can’t do it after eight years, that it should be: ‘I need to motivate.’ They have something inside that is a fire, to compete – otherwise we would not be here.”
Winning – games and titles – is, also, a vital ingredient which maintains the precarious and finely tuned balance of the City machine. Victory is the intoxicant that causes a desire for more of the same supreme sensation it produces. This is why, in a season when City are being pushed by two rivals, the spoils when Arsenal visit are so crucial and, maybe, defining to their title and treble hopes. And where Manchester City might head beyond this season.