Terrace talk: There is always a 'but' with Manchester City

Pep Guardiola's presence guarantees so much for City: organisation, pride, precision, drive, hunger, love, attention to detail and a blue river of tactical tweaks and fiddles

BLUE WAVE: Manchester City's Ilkay Gundogan lifts the Premier League trophy. Pic: PA

As is de rigueur these days when writing essays on Manchester City, mention should be made of sportswashing, financial doping, Hard Power, Nation State hegemony, the unutterable boredom of winning and the inevitability of death, taxes and nobody at all caring about City.

What difference does it make? It makes none. No coronation can go ahead without speed-delivery of a refrigerated container of asterisks, an enormous echo chamber of whataboutery and the laying of huge banners at the shrines of Anfield and Old Trafford reading “Nobody Cares. No, Really, None of us”.

There is, it seems, always a “but” with City, always a pair of brackets, always a row of deeply unhappy folk with ruddily contorted faces, spluttering things like “cheat!” “dope!” and “But Solskjaer!”. In fact, there has always been a but, but the but used to be spelled with two t’s.

The butt of every joke, a disaster zone sprayed liberally with a brand of trophy-repellant so strong, everything that came into contact with it simply detonated. City became many people’s “second club” so dopey and lethargic, pathetic and stained were they. So awful as to be harmless enough to wish well. People felt sorry for the legions of bedraggled and clearly deranged people who insisted on following their ridiculous antics across land and sea (the “sea” part in those days restricted to quaint pre-season drubbings by Celtic in Dublin and not Istanbul for a Champions League final).

But money has put paid to that. It was always going to.

Everyone in football has money now. The Premier League is awash with the stuff, to the degree that Brazilian starlets choose Bournemouth ahead of Milan, Fulham instead of Bayern. City, of course, are in another league above that, a place of Lamborghinis and caviar, champagne and gold-crusted balti pies. You splash enough cash, the saying goes, and the golden gates open wide for you.

That is clearly not the whole story. City’s planet-sized chequebook has bought £14m Manuel Akanji, £20m Julian Alvarez, £24m Ilkay Gundogan and, before them, £6m Vincent Kompany. They pay clear testament to, whisper it, wise spending, excellent scouting and astute team building. The first three played a robust part in the defrocking of Real Madrid in an extraordinary semi-final of the Champions League, a game that crowned City as something extraordinary.

Real, who had refused to collapse at the same stage last year, were swept aside in their own tournament by a tidal wave of precision power football. This display alone is worth a line or two of unfettered praise, uncluttered by the grudging prose that has met the club’s progress so often in the past.

We are watching a team, a manager and a way of playing that is pushing the boundaries, challenging competitors to up their game. Liverpool and Arsenal have found out just how tough it is. Tough to match, near-impossible to maintain.

Now regularly outspent by the likes of United and Chelsea, the difference in outcome is eye-watering. United flounder, Chelsea play like a school project about discovering how your body works, Liverpool grind to a breathless halt, City sail smoothly on. Five titles in six years, smooth as clockwork, no pressure at all.

But Guardiolas aren’t forever. The magical Kevin de Bruyne cannot slice the wind forever. City have replaced the Silvas and Toures, the Agueros and Kompanys with more Silvas, a Grealish and a hunk of marbled goalscoring beef called Haaland. When the Catalan leaves, the story bends again, the succession twists. So, hold on to your hats.

Time’s arrow has already been fired, but the extraordinary Catalan is not going just yet. His presence guarantees so much for City: organisation, pride, precision, drive, hunger, love, attention to detail and a blue river of tactical tweaks and fiddles. He has mastered English football and prepared his playing squad for combat when it matters. It is no coincidence that as Arsenal have faltered in recent weeks, City have motored on like an articulated truck, the great thudding motor reducing Mikel Arteta’s young men to a sloppy mess.

That they were finally run down by it must be no slight on Arsenal. They were in direct combat with one of the greatest teams we have seen in English football history. Football’s cycles will produce others in the future and a Pep-less City will soon return to the mortal coil, but just now they are flying. They are kings. The coronation has just begun. Let the trumpets toot loud, for the pleasure, the privilege is ours.