Three reasons why Manchester City will win the Premier League title
As the curtains begin to close on yet another memorable Premier League season, we’re about to be served with a title race for the ages.
It seems to be becoming a recurrence every year, with each fixture’s importance demonstrated through the edge-of-the-seat, final week thrillers. Amidst the ever-changing modern-day football and its dynamics are Manchester City, stringing together winning streaks, smashing records along their way, and winning titles.
While their fierce title rivals in the recent past – Liverpool – have faltered throughout the season, Manchester United have huffed and puffed in the second half of the campaign.
Indeed, Arsenal have launched a remarkable bid for the title, racking up 75 points from 32 matches.
Not used to playing catch up, Manchester City are now five points behind Mikel Arteta’s charges with two games in hand.
The two-horse race will go right down to the wire. Below we’ll break down why Manchester City will clinch their fifth title in six years.
#1 Erling Haaland’s home record
Erling Haaland collects goals in bulk, averaging a staggering 1.29 goals per 90 in the Premier League.
He’s redefining goalscoring at an unimaginable rate, having first announced himself to the Etihad faithful with a 19-minute treble against Crystal Palace on August 27th. He’s since gone on to score five more hat tricks and is far from done.
33 of Haaland’s goals have come at home. All six of his hat tricks have come at the Etihad stadium, a forum where records now seemingly tumble on a weekly basis. Haaland became the first player ever to score hat tricks in three successive league matches – a record that could perhaps never be eclipsed.
Why are these numbers important?
When Arsenal visit Manchester City on the 26th of this month for a potential title-defining tussle, many players will cancel each other out in a head-to-head battle. However, Haaland’s all-round abilities could make the difference.
Pep Guardiola’s teams are blessed with goal scorers from every position, but in Erling Haaland, the Spanish mastermind has just upgraded a machine that was already ahead of its competition in the market.
#2 Attractive return to form
Manchester City have been questioned for various reasons this year, notably during the early stages of the campaign. Victims of their own supremacy, they’ve lost more than they had in the whole of last season.
They lost the Community Shield (which seems like a lifetime ago), and draws against Copenhagen, Borussia Dortmund and Aston Villa had the purists commenting on the lack of ruthlessness that we usually associate them with.
They also briefly derailed post World Cup, failing to beat relegation candidates Everton and Nottingham Forest, along with picking up a customary loss at the hands of Tottenham Hotspur away from home.
The Cityzens have upped the ante of late. The 1-1 draw against Bayern Munich, which will be accounted for as a victory due to the first-leg advantage, happens to be the only match out of the last seven Manchester City have played where they’ve scored less than three goals.
Three a piece against Leicester City and Bayern, four each against a hapless Southampton side and Liverpool, and a swashbuckling six against Burnley came on the heels of a 7-0 thumping of RB Leipzig. Taken together, the club has sent a message across to the top tiers of European football that they’ve rediscovered their form.
Manchester City aren’t just back; they’re soaring into the backend of competitions, eyeing a treble in what has widely been pin-pointed as one of their more uneven seasons under Guardiola.
Presently on an 11-match winning streak, Guardiola is harnessing perfection in a short burst for a treble. And very few are ready to write them off despite the magnitude of the task left at hand.
Arsenal, on the other hand, have blown away 2-0 leads in two of their previous league outings, and needed some late game heroics to salvage a draw against Southampton. They’ve outperformed predictions all season long, but against a side that possesses championship DNA, Arteta and co. will require a miracle.
#3 Pep Guardiola’s managerial makeover
OL Lyon, Tottenham Hotspur, AS Monaco among other less favored oppositions have all stunned Manchester City in the UCL in recent years.
A homogenous pattern has been counterattacking and using City’s numbers up the field against them. The game against Bayern Munich was anything but how a Pep Guardiola team would approach a match.
“You know how Pep is, he always adapts. He thinks others are watching our games, so he always adapts a little bit quicker. He changed the way we have been playing as a defense this season, and now we’re playing very well. It took us a little bit of time to get to that point where we feel comfortable,” exclaimed Bernardo Silva, after starring in the draw at Munich.
City had just over 40% of the ball, and merely two shots on target in contrast to Bayern’s total of 19 shots. Guardiola has transformed into a prosaic approach against his philosophy, which is the need of the hour if they are to win their maiden Champions League crown.
Guardiola, a coach with 10 league titles to his credit, is developing a new style of seeing out matches. Away from all the glitter, this new version of Manchester City holds the key. Big teams win titles by evolving, and there is no better time to morph into a side that churns out wins in different patterns.
Bernardo also admitted that the plan inside the dressing room has changed accordingly. He added, zeroing in on the need to shift gears,“Before we used to think we needed to dominate games and control the final third. But, in this competition when we play the likes of Bayern Munich, PSG, Real Madrid, etc., you need to accept that sometimes you must defend and be consistent. That’s what we are working on, because in the past we have had a lot of frustrating nights because of that.”
This flexibility is what puts Manchester City ahead of the rest year after year.
Guardiola’s habit of getting better already has him ahead of many top managers in the game. And although this season likely isn’t what Man City had in mind, it could still be one of their best one yet under the Spaniard when all is said and done.
-Roy Akarshak
Twitter: @RoyAkarshak
Photo: Ank Kumar. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.