Manchester City’s win over Stoke at the weekend was joyful to watch. Not often do we get to see a football team play to that level, and rarely do we see things click just so magnificently as they did on Saturday afternoon for Pep Guardiola’s team.
It was stunning: a masterclass in how to play as a team. This season, 11 different players have scored for City, as the goals have been spread around. Seven of those 11 players have provided at least one assist in addition to their goals, whilst Sergio Aguero, Gabriel Jesus and Raheem Sterling each have seven goals to their name. The top scorer moniker is shared among three players, which is quite simply incredible, and only Romelu Lukaku of Manchester United can match that.
Having credited at least one goal to 11 separate players is really quite a feat after only eight games, too. In fact, 13 of the Premier League’s 20 clubs are yet to even reach 11 in their goals for column for the whole season. They’ve scored more than double the tally of every other team in the league except Manchester United and Tottenham, and even then Spurs have only managed 51% of that tally: they have 15 to City’s 29. It’s been a masterclass so far.
None of this is to say that City will blow the opposition away or even win the league. Indeed, they won their first 10 Premier League games last season, and given they could only draw with Everton earlier this season, that means they have fewer points than they did at this stage last season, and they still managed to be out of contention by the end of January. But because of that experience, surely nothing will be taken for granted.
What this is to say, though, is that every other club in the league is probably watching on with envy. Envious of the way the play and the football they produce. The sheer level of confidence that it must take to always risk conceding on the counter attack – especially after their experiences last season – and the unparalleled belief in their own ability to keep hold of the ball and not lose it in possession is impressive in itself.
But the most frightening bit is that whatever bravery and self-belief they must have had to start with this season, they have even more of it now they’re playing so well. Good performances breed confidence. And none have been better than City’s.
But one club in particular must surely be wondering about what might have been.
Over two decades ago, Arsene Wenger arrived at Arsenal and achieved pretty much the same thing. Pep Guardiola’s methods and style of play is very much of its time, and so too was Wenger’s revolution at Highbury.
Wenger’s first season wasn’t a full season in charge, and although Arsenal finished third and had a good season, it was Wenger’s second season when it all came together for the first time. That was the 1997/98 season, and this is the 20th anniversary of Wenger’s first title-winning season. In fact, it was a double-winning year.
That campaign, Arsenal played sparkling football, blowing the opposition away and winning the league mathematically with two games to spare.
The game that won them the title is, still today, seen as encapsulating the idea that Arsenal were something new, exciting and very different to what English football had seen go before. Not only did they seal the championship with a 4-0 victory at home to Everton, which allowed them to win in style, but they did it with a fourth goal that seemed to sum it all up: Steve Bould played a sumptuous lobbed through ball to his centre-back partner Tony Adams, releasing the captain through on goal before he finished smartly. Centre-back to centre-back to cut through the opposition: total football
These days, Arsenal are not at the cutting edge, both in terms of innovation and attacking flair. After looking like they might have turned a corner in between the international breaks, the Gunners plunged themselves into misery again with a defeat away to Watford, ceding their top place in the league to Marco Silva’s side. Arsenal are level on points with Burnley, but ahead of them in the table by virtue only of goals scored. To put it another way, given the two are level on goal difference, Arsenal have conceded more.
Long gone are the days when Arsene Wenger was an innovator. He was the future once, but now he is very much becoming the past. A man whose former glories are, sadly, behind him and who can only look on at the team Manchester City have produced and remember the good times of two decades ago.
More’s the pity for Arsenal, then, that if Wenger had indeed decided to leave the club when Guardiola was leaving Bayern Munich, there’s a chance it would be them playing City’s football this season. City’s board and their links – indeed friendships – with Guardiola may well have seen them lose out to City in any case, but there was always a feeling that his style suited Arsenal’s and made him look every inch the perfect Wenger replacement. Now, City are the team in his image.
It’s too early for long-term predictions and pronouncements. City are the best team in the country, but that has to be followed by ‘at the moment’. There is always a very real chance that this current form is a flash in the pan, and perhaps the winter – with its coldness, its fixture congestion and its heavier pitches – wreaks havoc in the City side with injuries and poor form laying waste to what was once a promising title challenge.
But at the moment, everyone’s looking at City as they looked at Arsenal 20 years ago.
