The energy dissipated into the silence of the London Stadium, a long weary sigh seemed to drain out of the Manchester City players and, with a whimper, their Premier League season was over.
There are many people still under the impression Man City can win the title, or at least that Arsenal can lose it, but there’s good reason why Opta’s ‘super-computer’ simulations give Mikel Arteta’s side a 97.6% chance of lifting the trophy.
It isn’t just the ten-point gap, nor even that Arsenal can afford to draw four of their final seven points and still be guaranteed to finish joint-top.
It’s that Man City are just nowhere near it. Our collective expectation that Pep Guardiola will inspire a familiar spring winning streak, and that Arsenal will begin to feel the nerves at some point, has hidden that most basic analysis: Man City are not good enough and have not been good enough for almost two years.
They are on course to finish with 77 points, six more than last year’s 71. The idea that a team who have dropped points in 40% of their Premier League matches (12/30) will suddenly win all their remaining games is ridiculous.
Man City’s title race is over - and with it, perhaps, is the Guardiola era.
We got so caught up watching Arsenal play with anxiety that nobody thought to question whether Man City could do with a bit more of it, but as their domestic campaign winds down we must now turn to a troubling lack of energy, focus, and purpose to Guardiola’s side over the last couple of season, and all the signs point to the great manager being the problem.
Guardiola’s genius is beyond question and his legacy secured. But from Sir Alex Ferguson to Jose Mourinho, eventually even the best managers lose something, either falling behind the tactical zeitgeist or simply losing the motivation, the hunger, to constantly adapt and update.
Guardiola’s Man City are entering their Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal stage.
That might sound hyperbolic but despite the enormous resources and brilliant squad depth at Guardiola’s disposal his team are playing like a caricature of themselves; a half-hearted rendition that looks familiar if you squint but lacks the details, the fury, that made Guardiola arguably the greatest manager of all time.
This shouldn’t really come as news, it’s just that when a brilliant manager fades we take a long time to catch up, and for a long time now Guardiola has given us signs he isn’t quite able to lift himself for the rebuild, “cannot do the job again and again and again and again,” as Jurgen Klopp famously put it in his resignation interview.
There have been constant shrugs of confusion and disappointment this season as Guardiola repeatedly analyses dropped points with a philosophical ‘that’s life’ attitude. He talks about being unable to control the rhythm of matches, about how hard it is to get momentum back when it is lost.
The old Pep didn’t do that. The old Pep got angry – and found solutions.
The biggest tell came back in December in the aftermath of the 5-4 victory at Craven Cottage, where Fulham almost came back from 5-1 down to steal a point.
Guardiola jokingly suggested it was because he was “so old” and his players “don’t respect me”, the kind of comment that you just wouldn’t make if there wasn’t a kernel of truth, if you had better answers, or indeed if you had the fire in the belly required to put it right.
There is no great same, nor mystery either, in how and why Guardiola has reached this point. There are no more mountains left to climb after winning the treble and breaking various English top-flight records, from the 100-point season to winning four titles in a row.
In fact, if we really want to locate the source of Man City’s current malaise we can go all the way back to comments Guardiola made in May 2024, shortly after his most recent Premier League crown.
“Last year, after [completing the treble in] Istanbul, I said ‘it’s over, there’s nothing left’. But I have a contract and I start to think ‘no-one has done four in a row, why don't we try?’ And now I feel it’s done, so what next? Now I don't know what exactly the motivation is because it's difficult to find it when everything is done.”
Everything is done.
Two years on from those comments Guardiola will, at best, have one more Carabao Cup and one more FA Cup to add to his collection. It was done back then and he knew it. Finding the motivation has proved to be impossible.
It leaves Man City and Guardiola at a crossroads, unsure how to part ways but, perhaps, both aware now is the right time to do it. Resigning, in glory and triumph, might be an elegant and thoughtful final act after an unprecedented decade of success in Manchester.
He would leave behind a brilliant squad and, more importantly, a rich tactical and technical foundation for whoever came next, not unlike the structure left by Jurgen Klopp that allowed Arne Slot to make only subtle changes, refresh the dressing room with a new and different energy, and walk to the Premier League title in 2024/25.
The obvious choice for a similar task is surely Vincent Kompany, a young and energetic coach with unmatched authority in the Etihad dressing room and now with managerial pedigree as he closes in on his second consecutive Bundesliga title with Bayern Munich.
There is no need for revolution, just a gentle push into the future with all of Guardiola’s influences remaining in the veins of the club. Perhaps Pep believes the final year of his contract is worth seeing out, is motivation for one last hurrah.
But assessing the brain fog of the last two domestic seasons it would be a lot easier, for everyone, if Guardiola rides off into the sunset this summer.
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