Considering the club’s unprecedented success and their manager’s profound rewriting of the way football is played in this country it is quite extraordinary that throughout, Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City have never moved us.
Maybe that is always the way with serial winners.
Jealousy is a bitter, colourless feeling and so too is the boredom that comes from predictable title battles and the same end result.
And yet Manchester United were despised in the 1990s and 2000s and are now looked back on with great fondness for some of the football they played.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that Man City’s time at the top is unique in exciting very little feeling either way.
The high points tallies and the ultra-efficient possession-dominant football is of course a big part of that, as is their nation-state ownership, combining to provide a triple layer of anti-romance, while an absence of Man City cheerleaders in the pundit class is probably a factor, too.
Then there’s time. A decade from now people may start feeling wistful about Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva, about Rodri and Erling Haaland.
Certainly only when Guardiola is gone will people truly begin to comprehend the scale of his one-man revolution, his transformational impact on Premier League football from tactics to fashion.
Until then, Man City will continue to be seen as dull; too robotic, clinical, and well run for anyone to really care about their success. Ironically, that means their demise is often wrongly foretold.
Every year Man City are relatively slow starters and every year we forget how they gradually move through the gears. Thanks to Guardiola’s squad rotation and his ability to coach a restful game when winning, City are always fresher and sharper than everyone else in spring.
But they don’t stir the soul and so, year after year, we begin to write them off.
This year is no different, but in reality Arsenal’s lead at the top is far more precarious than it looks. For evidence, just look at where Man City are: second, and only six points behind, despite having been utterly forgettable in every single Premier League appearance so far.
Nothing much has happened beyond Haaland’s usual fast start, and yet with Rayan Ait-Nouri still to come in, Jeremy Doku blossoming, Rayan Cherki back from injury with two assists at the weekend, and City consistently winning without Rodri, Guardiola’s side are in just as advantageous a position as they usually are at the start of November.
And they usually win the league.
Guardiola is supposedly in a transitional year, having continued to nudge his players towards a more direct game so far this season.
But for a team still working things out, it should alarm Arsenal supporters that Man City have only dropped points at Villa Park, the Amex, the Emirates, and at home to Tottenham; four fixtures Guardiola often struggles to win even in 90+ points seasons.
In the 12 matches in all competitions since the beginning of September Man City have won 10, dropping points only at Villa and at Arsenal. That is par for Guardiola in a title-winning season.
Others might not be taking notice, but Guardiola will be feeling quietly confident with the unremarkable way City are winning matches and the lack of fuss being made about them.
This is what he does. This, though it might not feel like it, is exactly what a Man City title-winning campaign looks like.
They face a stronger, deeper, and more gifted Arsenal side than Mikel Arteta has ever had and yet in a straight fight with Guardiola’s Man City you would still expect the six-time winner to have the edge in the run-in.
Nevertheless most pundits seem to believe Arsenal won’t get a serious challenge from Man City.
But, as ever, they just aren’t paying enough attention to English football’s invisible winning machine.
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