What a magical, fraught, tense, glorious final day of the Premier League season.
Manchester City, who before kick-off were strong favourites to beat Aston Villa and finish off the job to lift the trophy, two goals down with 20 minutes to play. Meanwhile, over in Merseyside, it meant Liverpool required one goal against Wolves to pip them to the title.
Off the bench stepped Ilkay Gündogan to score two of three goals in the space of five breathless, trademark Premier League minutes to secure Pep Guardiola a fourth Premier League title in five years.
What drama. What a fairytale. You couldn’t write it, people often say while clearly ignoring the rich feast of extraordinarily clever and complex plotting across fiction since the dawn of time.
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When you can bring players of Gündogan’s ilk off the bench late in a game when opponents are exhausted from over an hour of City’s relentless pressing, they can have that effect. And City can do that everywhere across the pitch.
In fact, they could arguably put out an entire second XI capable of challenging for the title. And that’s problematic for the League’s competitiveness. How are other teams supposed to keep up with a team of two teams?
Zack Steffen would come in for first-choice goalkeeper Ederson. Beyond that, City’s first-team is up for debate but the principle point remains. Say Kyle Walker, Aymeric Laporte, Ruben Dias and Joao Cancelo are your four defenders. That leaves Oleksandr Zinchenko, John Stones, Nathan Ake and, with Benjamin Mendy suspended pending the outcome of a trial in which he has denied nine sexual offences, they would have to rely on a youngster, such as CJ Egan-Riley.
The strongest midfield three is probably Kevin De Bruyne, Rodri and Bernardo Silva. That leaves Fernandinho, Gündogan and then another young player coming through, such as Cole Palmer.
The best front three has probably been Riyad Mahrez, Gabriel Jesus and Phil Foden. That leaves you backup of Raheem Sterling, Jack Grealish and new signing Julian Alvarez, the 22-year-old Argentinian who many claim to be the best young attacker to have emerged recently from South America.
City’s second string would certainly give it a good go.
Jose Mourinho made the claim in 2019 after watching City dismantle West Ham as a Sky Sports pundit and it probably rings truer than ever. When asked to name who could compete for the title, Mourinho replied: “Man City, Tottenham, Liverpool and Man City B team. When I looked at the bench, the players not involved, I think the City B team could fight for the title.”
The great Manchester United and Arsenal sides that challenged for the Premier League title in the 1990s and early 2000s had brilliant first XIs and some brilliant players to come in, but not a whole second team.
Despite what City fans will think, this is not a criticism of Guardiola. To create two strong starting XIs, to keep a host of superstars happily rotating, to keep 22 plates spinning with only a few wobbles, is no easy feat. Guardiola has got it down to an art form.
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We still don’t know, however, if this astonishing depth has been achieved legitimately, as we await the conclusion of the Premier League’s three-year investigation into whether City have breached Financial Fair Play rules.
After Uefa found City guilty of FFP breaches, the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned the ruling due to evidence falling outside the required five-year period. But the Premier League case remains ongoing.
Until then, it’s uncertain if City gamed the system, or if creating two starting XIs in a single club that could legitimately challenge for the title is a mark of marvellous ingenuity.
Manchester United’s goal difference decline
It was, understandably, overlooked in all the final-day drama but Manchester United recording a final goal difference of 0 is a quite remarkable statistic.
There were some poor seasons in the early Sir Alex Ferguson years when he was building a dynasty that would rule English football for decades. The -1 goal difference they finished with in 1989-90. Only +10 the season before that and +13 the season after.
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But those aside, the lowest a Ferguson side ever posted was +29, in 2003-04. The other 22 were +30-plus.
In the nine seasons since Ferguson retired, they recorded a goal difference of +40 in 1917-18, +30 in 2019-20 but the rest have fallen below that. It points to a major problem across the club that leaves new manager Erik ten Hag with his work cut out.
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