Sometimes a sharp slap in the face is just the ticket. When Glenn Murray scored to put Brighton 1-0 up against Manchester City, it was the first time City had been behind in the league since January. How would they react?
The answer was: immediately. It took 83 seconds for Sergio Agüero to punish Brighton's faulty offside trap with the equaliser. A few minutes later Murray split his own defence with a bizarre throughball backpass. Mat Ryan saved from Riyad Mahrez, but Aymeric Laporte met the resulting corner with a powerful header for 2-1. Confident now of victory, City's football started to flow. With 30 minutes remaining, Riyad Mahrez – a £60 million reserve – scored a beautiful goal to put the result beyond doubt.
It was a moment of sweet vindication for Mahrez and for his manager. His inclusion in the team had been a surprise – he played only 39 per cent of the available minutes in the Premier League, and he had not started since the Champions League defeat at Tottenham. Had City blown it, his season would have been remembered for a missed penalty at Anfield. Instead he has a second Premier League winners' medal and Guardiola's assurances that next season he will feature more regularly.
Glowed
Sitting in his post-match press conference, winners' medal around his neck, Guardiola glowed with happiness. He has said more positive things about the Premier League in the last few weeks than in the rest of the three seasons he has been in England. Before, his general line was that the Premier League was very well marketed, but was not really tougher than the leagues in Germany and Spain. Now he is saying that this is the league title he is proudest of in all his time in management, since Liverpool are the best team he has faced as a coach, along with the 2015 Barcelona of Neymar, Suárez and Messi.
Of course, his increased respect for the league owes something to the influence his team have had on it. “We increased the standards of this competition,” he said, and this is the truth: Liverpool surely could not have got 97 points if they were not chasing City’s almost-impossible standards.
Guardiola was asked whether he felt City were now in the conversation to be the best English team ever. “Within 10, 15 or 20 years, if people talk about this team – it’s because we were a really good team,” he said.
But he knows that nobody will be talking about City being the best-ever English team while they are getting knocked out of the Champions League in the quarter-finals.
City's record since February reads: played 22, won 20, drawn one. The one draw came in the Carabao Cup final against Chelsea, which City won on penalties, so really it's 21 wins out of 22.
Single blot
The solitary loss, the single blot on this astonishing record, is that 1-0 defeat to Spurs that ultimately got City knocked out of the Champions League. That result only gets stranger in hindsight, and the memory will only grow more bitter over the coming weeks, with City the only member of the Premier League’s top five not involved in a European final.
The Champions League is the trophy that has eluded Guardiola since he had Lionel Messi in his team, the one that he wants more than any other. There's a sneaking suspicion that when he looks back years from now, the thing that he will remember from this season is not the pleasure of winning a domestic treble, but the frustration of having thrown away the Champions League by losing to a palpably inferior team.
The mystery for City is how they can have been so much better in league play and yet have squandered the chance of a unique quadruple with one tentative, inhibited performance at Spurs.
They also need to consider signing a striker, since Sergio Agüero will be 31 at the beginning of next season
Guardiola might have to reconsider his own approach to these games: perhaps he overthought the gameplan for the Spurs game, just as he had done the previous year when losing the Champions League quarter-final at Anfield. Maybe he has underestimated the virtue of simplicity for these high-pressure occasions.
Vulnerable
But he has promised that City will be even better next season and for that they will need to spend. The one area of the squad where they had looked vulnerable was at the base of midfield, where, having failed in August to sign Jorginho, they played all season without real cover for Fernandinho, who is now 34. They got away with it, just, but it is hard to imagine they will not have addressed this issue before next season.
They also need to consider signing a striker, since Sergio Agüero will be 31 at the beginning of next season and Gabriel Jesus's performances since the World Cup have not inspired confidence. In defence, Vincent Kompany is due to leave the club when his contract expires on June 30th. They should extend his deal, since they only need him for cover, and he has proven over the last few weeks that he remains a trustworthy option.
Most of all they will hope that next season Kevin de Bruyne might stay fit. City’s best midfielder played only 28 per cent of minutes in the league. To play most of the season without him and finish only two points short of the 100-point record they set last year is a testament to the quality of City’s squad and the power of Guardiola’s system.
