Premier League Preview: Making sense of the league in the Time of Guardiola

Every season, some team or other wins the Premier League. Usually they’re pretty good. Sometimes they’re great. And every now and then, they’re game-changing.

City’s win last season felt like one of those game-changing seasons, of a piece with Chelsea under Jose Mourinho the first time around, or Arsene Wenger’s first great Arsenal side. City didn’t just win the league. They thrashed it. All of it. They did so with style. And they ended up 18 points ahead of Manchester United in second and 37 ahead of Arsenal in sixth.

For other clubs, the question is: How do we close that gap? Stick, or twist? Keep going on the same path, or tear things up and start over? There are five teams with hopes, however vague, of toppling their pale blue overlords, and 14 teams beyond them hoping to pick up a point or three. And all the while, City are planning to entrench their hegemony. Let’s take a look at how everybody’s dealing with Year One, A.G.

Before Alexis Sanchez got distracted by Jose Mourinho, by Jose Mourinho’s Big Chequebook, and by Jose Mourinho’s Inexplicable Piano, he was supposed to be going to City. Made no difference to the eventual champions, of course, and didn’t go particularly well for Sanchez. But it was revealing, in respect of Pep Guardiola and what he thought was missing from his pretty decent squad.

So over this summer, City took the cash that would have gone to Arsenal and directed it towards Leicester, taking delivery of a bleach-blond Riyad Mahrez in return. Mahrez and Sanchez aren’t quite the same player, but what they have in common is the ability to summon the inexplicable. Guardiola has an intricate and hyperactive team that makes you say, over and over again, “Wow”. The missing piece: a player that makes you say, every now and then, “Ooh”.

And Mahrez, apparently, was all he and his bosses were after. Jorginho chose Chelsea, and City shrugged. The confidence. The relaxation. It’s kind of terrifying.

Confidence and relaxation are not universal to Manchester’s Premier League football clubs. Over in the red corner, there’s a distinctly uncivil war. Jose Mourinho asked for a list of players, and didn’t get them. Worse, it appears that he didn’t get them because his paymasters, the men with the chequebooks, thought his list was stupid and self-serving.

You can see both sides. On the one hand, who is Ed Woodward to tell Jose Mourinho anything about football? But on the other, why should United spend small, medium, or even large fortunes on the whims of a manager who probably won’t be around for that much longer, and has very little interest in the state of the club after his departure? Even before you get into the tediously close reading of every hangdog press conference and grumpy remark, Mourinho’s position is necessarily time-limited by the fact of who he is.

The upshot is United are in a weird, tense place. They might be absolutely fine, in a similar vein to last season: mostly dull, usually functional, ultimately comfortable in the top four. And at the same time, they could easily be shown up, week on week, by City. Not just in terms of points — though it will be a surprise if United have closed that 19-point gap — but in the equally important business of anybody having any fun.

Whether that tension is sustainable is going to be the big question, and the imagination isn’t coming up with many non-disastrous answers. And if Liverpool turn up as well, then things could get properly messy.

It all makes sense, when you think about the big picture. After all, when you’re in the middle of the long, slow, painful process of moving house, you don’t go out and buy a whole load of new stuff. Not until you’ve got into the new place and worked out where the table’s going to go. This summer was an exercise in bundling Harry Kane and the rest of the lovely youngsters into cardboard boxes, scribbling something illegible on the outside, and waiting to take possession of the keys. And that’s fine.

ROAR. ROAR. NEW SPINE. COMING FOR YOU, CITY. WE’VE GOT A PROPER KEEPER NOW. AND BIG VIRGIL FOR A WHOLE SEASON. AND JURGEN KLOPP, WHO IS MUSTARD. AND NABY KEITA. AND ALMOST A SQUAD. ALMOST. Almost. Don’t look too closely at the defence. ROAR. RUN FASTER. RUN MORE. MO SALAH. YEAH. NOBODY GET HURT, please.

Chelsea are confusing, aren’t they? Just when you think Roman Abramovich has finally got bored of his favourite toy, scuppering the new stadium deal and making weird managerial appointments, they go and drop a quite ridiculous amount of money on a 23-year-old goalkeeper. Why won’t you talk to us, Roman? Just tell us what you’re thinking!

Anyway, it looks like Chelsea have decided to take City on at an aesthetic level, an ambition that has to be applauded. Sarri-ball is great fun when it works, and David Luiz is great fun when he doesn’t. Ultimately, the world makes more sense when Chelsea are vaguely flaky entertainers, and goodness knows we could all do with the world making a little more sense.

If there’s a good time to completely rebuild a club, it’s probably when everybody’s looking somewhere else. The expectations that come with being Arsenal are ever-present, of course; the need to win everything in style while also making Tottenham sad. But nobody’s expecting Arsenal to really challenge City this season. Nobody who isn’t in need of a good sit down, anyway.

So we can only congratulate Unai Emery and the board on their excellent timing. Hiding Year One, Anno Wenger under the skirts of Year One, Anno Guardiola is, on balance, a stroke of genius. If they challenge: Great! Hooray! And if they don’t? Well, there was a 37-point gap last season. As long as that gets smaller, and performances get better, it’ll do.

Apart from the losses to United and Liverpool, four other teams took points off City last season: Everton, Crystal Palace, Burnley and Huddersfield Town. All did so thanks to low scoring draws; indeed, Palace away and Huddersfield at home were the only two blanks City drew all season. So there’s the model: Sit deep, defend stoutly, pray a little ...

… and if you’re lucky, you might not get utterly smashed until at least the second half. 100 points and 106 goals tells the real story: This is a side built to take massed defences apart. To gulp down minnow after minnow without stopping to breathe. To swallow leagues whole.

That said, there’s a lot that’s interesting going on in the Premier League’s Other Fourteen this season. Everton and West Ham look like they could be fun, Fulham and Wolves aren’t messing about, and plenty of others are building on decent seasons last time around. Sure, there’ll be a lot of turtling defence. But hopefully one or two sides will decide that their games against City are basically a free hit.

What’s the worst that could happen? A 5-0 defeat? Yeah, that’s probably coming anyway. Give us City 5-4 Everton. That’s the season we want.