REMEMBER WHEN Manchester City won the treble?
Yes, they’ve done it already.
In the 2018-19 season, Pep Guardiola’s men claimed the Premier League title, the FA Cup and the EFL Cup.
Yet you suspect most non-City fans will be hard-pressed to vividly recall too many games from that campaign.
Highlights included a 14-game end-of-season winning run on their way to claiming the title as well as a 6-0 FA Cup final defeat of Watford.
City are on course to finish their campaign in a similarly spectacular fashion this time around.
While an unlikely win for a Nathan Jones-managed Southampton means they failed to secure the EFL Cup this year, Pep Guardiola is one game away from attaining the only major trophy that has thus far eluded his grasp during a hugely successful Etihad stint — the Champions League.
The club’s masterful 4-0 midweek win over a formidable Real Madrid team is already being hailed by some pundits as the best-ever performance by an English club in Europe.
Yet the match also felt like a metaphor for Pep’s City tenure at large. They were simply so brilliant and obviously superior to their rivals that the victory ultimately felt a little dull and almost hollow.
Man City’s dominance at an English and European level is such that it’s gotten to the point where even not winning just one of the three trophies up for grabs will feel like some sort of cataclysmic failure.
Certain readers will be old enough to remember the 1993-94 Man United side who became just the fourth English team in the 20th century to win a league and FA Cup double.
It won’t be a surprise to learn that City will be the fourth English men’s team this century to achieve the feat if they can beat United in the final and win the title as expected.
Of course, that Red Devils ’94 side were eclipsed by the team Ferguson built five years later, as they became the first and so far only men’s English outfit to win a treble of the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League.
With Guardiola’s City in line to emulate that feat, inevitable comparisons have been drawn between the two teams and their respective eras.
Yet the differences perhaps remain more stark than the similarities.
Part of what makes the United team stand out in the memory is the amount of jeopardy they had to overcome.
Take the extra-time Ryan Giggs wonder goal in the classic FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal after they went down to 10 men — there has been nothing remotely comparable in the current season with this City team in terms of drama and excitement.
It’s also worth noting how difficult it was for United to win the title.
Ferguson’s men finished the season on 79 points amid a dramatic final day that saw them earn a come-from-behind win over Tottenham to pip Arsenal by a single point.
But 79 points would only be good enough for third place this season. Indeed it’s the third lowest tally acquired by champions since the Premier League began — only Man United 1996-97 (75 points) and Arsenal 1997-98 (78 points) had lower figures.
Nowadays, it is more or less mandatory that the Premier League champions go above 80 (and often 90) points.
The 2-0 win over Newcastle in the 1999 FA Cup final where goals from Teddy Sheringham and Paul Scholes in the 11th and 53rd minute was United’s one relatively straightforward, undramatic, climactic triumph of that famous season, whereas almost every big City game this year feels like the equivalent to it.
The decreased levels of competitiveness are one of many reasons why you suspect this impossibly talented side won’t be remembered as fondly as the 1999 United team, who just seem slightly more human and flawed compared to their machine-like counterparts.
The Etihad outfit may become the first English club to replicate United’s achievement but the concept of winning a treble that includes the Champions League/European Cup no longer feels as special as it once was.
In the 20th century, such a feat was incredibly rare. In addition to Man United, there were just three other men’s teams that managed it — Celtic (1966-67), Ajax (1971-72) and PSV Eindhoven (1987-88).
But since 2008, the treble has been realised on five occasions — Barcelona (2008/09 and 2014/15), Inter (2009/10) and Bayern Munich (2012/13 and 2019/20) — with City on course to make it six. And this number might be higher had perennial Champions League winners Real Madrid not taken such a comparatively cavalier approach to their domestic responsibilities in recent years.
With the way modern football is structured and its economics, meaning the top talent playing at an increasingly select group of clubs, completing a treble is no longer such an extraordinary achievement and could well become even more commonplace in years to come.
Moreover, even relatively recent treble winners have seemed more compelling in many ways than City. Guardiola’s Barca 2009 team, for instance, was built around players like Lionel Messi, Xavi, Anders Iniesta, Gerard Piqué, Víctor Valdés, Pedro and Carles Puyol — all of whom had graduated from the club’s famed La Masia academy.
By contrast, not one player who started in the Real Madrid win was a product of City’s academy.
It is, of course, impossible not to admire the levels Guardiola’s men have reached, which are arguably as impressive as any of the teams mentioned above, but when you consider the factors outlined, in addition to the other baggage — their status as a state-backed, sportswashing project, as well as the 115 alleged financial breaches — there are multiple caveats to their success that explains why it is invariably leaving most neutrals cold.
Upcoming fixtures (3pm kick-off unless stated otherwise)
Saturday
Tottenham v Brentford (12.30)
Bournemouth v Man United
Fulham v Crystal Palace
Liverpool v Aston Villa
Wolves v Everton
Nottingham Forest v Arsenal (17.30)
Sunday
West Ham v Leeds (13.30)
Brighton v Southampton (14.00)
Man City v Chelsea (16.00)
Monday
Newcastle v Leicester (20.00)
