A Manchester City Take on the Title Race

Written on the eve of the final day of the 18/19 Premier League season as part of a ‘for and against’ piece. The other half of the piece was written by a colleague who proposed that Liverpool who were more deserving of winning the title race. City won in the end…

As the narrative of the 2018/19 title race has unfolded, there has been a strong argument to proffer Manchester City as the villain of the piece. Oil rich, playing in front of a ¾ capacity crowd and embroiled in allegations of financial doping, plucky and charming underdogs they certainly are not.

But, in the midst of all the rhetoric and the blistering title challenge from their rivals on Merseyside, it’s easy to neglect giving Guardiola and Manchester City their dues. Yes, they’ve spent on a scale hitherto unforeseen in football, but what City’s Catalan ringmaster has done on these shores goes beyond money, beyond narratives, beyond common sense, even. Guardiola’s men are playing at the very frontier of football, constantly testing the limits of what the game can be – even if it isn’t particularly endearing, no one can deny their fundamental brilliance

Last season, City’s opponents seemed to be pissing in the wind, this season some seemed to have given up pissing altogether. Such is the disparity in terms of quality between them and their opponents, teams in the bottom half have seemed content to shut up the proverbial shop and keep the score line as un-embarrassing as possible.

Conversely, almost anyone who has had the temerity to turn up and try and out-play them has seemed stuck in a mouse wheel, chasing sky-blue blurs about the pitch for 90 minutes and getting absolutely nowhere. With a Brighton side in freefall still to play, City have scored 4 or more goals on 13 separate occasions this season, 3 or more on 29. Twenty-nine.

Neutral fans across the country seem split over the outcome of the rumbling, pulsating title race. On the one hand you have the disproportionately wealthy newcomers with relatively little history and relatively few real supporters; on the other, the revitalised former juggernaut of English football, without a league title in 30 years. It’s tempting to see Liverpool lifting the trophy as the more emotionally evocative, and therefore more appealing, of the two potential outcomes. An understandable opinion, but by no means the only valid one…

Vincent Kompany was signed by the club a mere 18 days after the club’s takeover by Sheikh Mansour: the day when Manchester City became the Manchester City we know today. He’s been there for the entirety of this project. His staggering bolt from the blue in the 1-0 victory against Leicester in their penultimate fixture was like the clever sign off performed by the protagonist in the blockbuster immediately before they finish off the bad guy – it was City’s answer to their critics who said there would be no romance in their defence of the title.

Moments like these, along with the emergence of Phil Foden as one of English football’s most promising talents and Raheem Sterling as not only a world-class player, but a crusader for fairness and racial equality, will ensure that, whoever tops the table come Sunday, we’ve seen a staggering title race between two equally staggering and praiseworthy teams.