While winning Manchester City’s third successive league title by rematching might seem like it was a one-horse race in the league this season, it wasn’t. Arsenal pushed Pep Guardiola’s men as far as they could. The city’s victory felt inevitableespecially with a destroyer of teams like Erling Haland in attack, but Arsenal led the league for more days than any team to fail to win the title with Mikel Arteta’s team leading the league for 278 days.
City faltered a bit after the World Cup and the title was in the hands of Arsenal, but City settled things when it mattered most, winning their two games against the Gunners by a combined scoreline of 7-2. The morale blows subsided as Arsenal went on a three match winless streak in April before losing to City.
The turnaround for Pep Guardiola’s men already started before that Kyle Walker be NBC Sports during City’s trophy celebrations.
“We opposed that result Liverpool which as you know was a top team. So I think from that point on we always believed we could do it,” Walker said during the festivities. “Of course we then went to Leeds, which was a difficult place, and got a result there and it’s just worn a little bit. from then.”
After the World Cup, City and quite a few teams around the world struggled due to a lack of rhythm, but this is where Guardiola is at his best. Never afraid to change something Joao Cancelo leaving stage left to Bayern Munich while Manuel Akanji who had joined from Dortmund in the summer, took on a bigger role and helped the team adapt to a formation change.
City’s shift to a 3-2-4-1 meant Walker wasn’t even a guaranteed starter John Stones became the inverted right back with Nathan Ak take a spot as a left central defender to contain fast wingers and forwards. Guardiola even stated publicly that Walker – who has been involved in all five of Guardiola’s titles at City – struggled with the demands of the position. With Guardiola’s demands and attention to detail, these are the only things that push players to stay at the top of their game as the whole team has played a part in this title.
“This group of guys is second to none, they are professionals, they are winners and I think more often than not we cross the line, but rest assured we are not done yet,” said Walker. “We have the FA Cup against our bitter rivals Manchester United, and we have the Champions League final on June 10. So we will enjoy it today, we will finally have a few glasses of champagne tonight and then we will move on to June 3 which you know is the big one, the FA Cup.”
You can hear Guardiola talking through Walker as the team is focused on the treble they can win. No extra motivation is needed to beat your rivals in a cup final and the Champions League trophy is the only thing that has eluded Guardiola when he was in charge of City. Winning these next few games will see this team go down in the books as one of the best City sides in history as they would achieve a feat not even the centurions of 2017/18. Flexibility and everyone knowing their role are the main reasons why these high notes are in play.