ONE down, three to go. The quadruple remains improbable for Manchester City but not so improbable as it was. There has been less talk of the possibility this season than there was last, partly because City, at least domestically, have more challengers than it did, and partly because City have been less obviously outstanding this season, but it is on.
Pep Guardiola understandably plays down his side’s chances – and it would be ludicrous if a quadruple became so expected that not winning four trophies in one season came somehow to be seen as a disappointment – and as he knows perhaps better than anybody, that being the best side in a knockout competition is no guarantee of winning it. But City now are 20 games from an achievement unprecedented in English football.
Morning, Cityzens!
How are we all feeling? After Pep's men managed to retain a trophy for the first time in #MCFC's history, is the quadruple really on? pic.twitter.com/kQm4PaktVr
— Unibet (@unibet) February 25, 2019
They are in the FA Cup quarter-final, three games from victory. They lead after the away leg of their Champions League last-16 tie against Schalke, and so are six games from success in that tournament. And in the league, they trail a stuttering Liverpool by a point with 11 games to go.
They have a deep squad, one that is more than equipped to ride out the current little glut of injuries. At their best they are playing with fluency and verve and even when they aren’t quite on song, as against Arsenal or Schalke, they have been finding a way to win, something that wasn’t always the case. Perhaps they’ll do the quadruple, perhaps they won’t, but what is certainly true is that very few teams in history, if any, have been so well placed to do it.
Which leads to another question. Is this a good thing? The great sides, the most successful sides, the sides that are laden with silverware are celebrated. There are those remembered for the style of their play – and City score highly there as well – or for the story that perhaps led them ultimately to failure, but essentially success is what secures a team its place in history.
De Bruyne: "Quadruple would make us the best ever" pic.twitter.com/0hf34DDavE
— Football Daily (@footballdaily) February 25, 2019
How will this City be remembered in 20 or 30 years? As a great side, clearly. As a team that played extraordinary football and that won a lot. If they win the quadruple, they would have achieved something unprecedented. That is not something that can be ignored. And yet.
Tottenham have a better record at this stage than all but 20 teams have before in the whole of English football history. And yet they’re third, six points off the top of the table, five behind City. One way of looking at it would be to say that City are not merely excelling but doing so against intense competition. But the bigger question is why the top teams are reeling off win after win, why their points totals are so high. And the answer to that is grimly obvious: the financial gulf between the strongest sides and the weakest in the Premier League and across Europe has never been greater.
Money doesn’t guarantee success, of course. City are exceptionally well-run, a club with a clear plan in which every part seems to work towards the same goal. Under a manager other than Guardiola, there is no guarantee they would be in this position. But money does shift the parameters of what is possible: the ceiling gets higher, the floor is never quite so low.
Last season there were 63 games in the Premier League in which one team had 70 per cent possession or more. Between 2003-04 and 2005-06, there were only three. This season there looking like being in the mid-sixties again. Imbalance, one team attacking as the other clings on, is now built into the game.
Pep Guardiola
12 major finals
11 victoriesWhat a record!#MCFC #CarabaoCupFinal pic.twitter.com/iDK9DrbEUT
— Unibet (@unibet) February 24, 2019
That’s not City’s fault. They have exploited the current economic situation as well as if not better than anybody else. But, even leaving aside the fraught issue of the source of their wealth, it does mean that, for some, their achievements will be greeted with a weary sigh: well done, your Ferrari outpaced that milk float.
The biggest issue, though, is if the quadruple becomes a regular occurrence. The double was once an almost impossible dream. Preston and Aston Villa had done it in the 19th century, then Tottenham and Arsenal, but Liverpool managed to keep falling short until 1986 before suddenly, in the nineties, it seemed to happen or be on the verge of happening every other season.
Having been achieved four times in the 104 years before the Premier League came into being, it has been achieved seven in the 27 since. Some of the magic was gone and trophies were increasingly hoarded by a small handful of clubs.
A quadruple would be an extraordinary achievement, but any celebration of it would stand against a background of dispiriting inequality.
