THE clamour to dismantle Pep Guardiola’s great edifice began in earnest from the moment UEFA dropped its Valentine’s Day bombshell that Manchester City were to be banned from European competition.
The club’s many detractors within the media scribbled away furiously with predictably poisoned pens. Rival fan-bases meanwhile tut-tutted, displaying a uniquely British version of schadenfreude that simultaneously takes sizable pleasure in another’s misfortune while also being outraged at the cause of it.
More broadly, the general public absorbed the news and reappraised their opinion of a team previously known for their unparalleled dominance achieved through innovative brilliance. Now they were a modern-day Icarus whose fall from grace from flying too close to the sun revealed a smuggled jet-pack beneath their beautiful feathers.
Carabao Cup
Premier League
Community Shield
FA Cup#ManCity pic.twitter.com/kxj5Licstn
— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 2, 2020
From a reputational standpoint UEFA’s judgement was potentially disastrous for City. It threatened to discolour and misremember all that went before it, unjustly tainting a nascent legacy made up of back-to-back Premier League titles won via pure sporting poetry. It threatened to write off two years of transformative football as an aberration.
Think that is an exaggeration? Where have you been? The heightened reactions to the ban saw critics scandalously attempt to distort recent history, reshaping it so that this season’s high-flying Liverpool are the new paragon of virtuous excellence with City shamed in their wake. It has been a split-narrative that appals in its dishonesty, lavishing acclaim on one team that has not yet earned it; the same acclaim the other more than merits but has always been denied.
This twisting of actuality has been made possible because Manchester City have been found guilty of falsely inflating their sponsorship revenues, a charge that would warrant condemnation only in the moral sphere. On the pitch also the club have recently been perceived to have fallen short. With six league defeats leading up to the winter break, this left them unusually vulnerable and deprived of a right to reply amidst the seemingly endless flak.
Those six defeats – and just as pertinently the meek manner of half of them – led many to believe Guardiola’s magnificent creation is becoming a fading force. It’s an argument that can legitimately be debated, not outright dismissed. Others however wrongly assumed it gave them license to prematurely consign this extraordinary side to the past, to rebrand and diminish them. It’s a version of events that in the last week alone has been comprehensively disproven.
Because first came a tremendous victory away to Real Madrid; a Champions League masterclass that not only revealed Pep’s architecture is still spellbinding but proved the club, players and fans are more connected than ever; strengthened in unity against those seeking to divide them.
We dem boyz ♀️
@QNetOfficial
#ManCity pic.twitter.com/Wq34sMgJU4— Manchester City (@ManCity) March 1, 2020
Then came yesterday’s Carabao Cup final success, a tense and tight affair with Aston Villa that saw the Blues prevail through the application of fortitude as much as talent. As a City skipper lifted the trophy for the fifth time in seven years it was a stark reminder to one and all that this much maligned club also happens to have blessed the game with its greatest team in history. Better than anything Liverpool or Manchester United can hold up from their pasts. Better than anyone.
Think that is an exaggeration? Where have you been? This weekend’s Wembley triumph means that City have now won eight from the last nine domestic trophies and that’s one hell of a mic-drop to the journalists cat-calling from the stalls insisting that it is Jurgen Klopp’s men who reign supreme. In reality Liverpool are en route to securing their first Premier League for 30 years; to securing a quarter of the amount of titles City have won in the last decade. For goodness sake can we have some perspective please?
For the record, at their absolute peak the all-conquering Liverpool of the seventies and eighties managed seven trophies in 12 years, while Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United won four in seven. Staying with data there is another that should worry those beyond the Etihad.
Five of the last seven League Cup winners went on to win a further trophy that season and given how recent events has galvanised the club and considering the momentum that has recommenced it’s perfectly possible that an FA Cup or Champions League could follow. Indeed, why not both with City having proven themselves beyond any doubt to be serial winners. A double treble anyone?
In years to come we might well look back on 2019/20 and duly note an opening few months of relative struggle for City but otherwise be utterly perplexed as to why that garnered so many apocalyptic headlines while Liverpool were heralded as the second coming.
It is worth noting too that history remembers achievements over opinion. It dries the poisoned pens of ink. It eschews bias for fact. You’re going to tell your grandkids that you saw this team, and the greatness of Guardiola’s edifice will echo long and loud down the corridors of time
