In the midst of its unbridled stretch of dominance in English football, it’s almost easy to forget Manchester City ran into a surprising roadblock on its way to its fifth Premier League title in the past six years.
A little over halfway through this 2022–23 league season, alarm bells were ringing at the Etihad. City had allowed two or more goals in eight of its first 29 matches in all competitions. Questions (perhaps comically so in hindsight) arose about whether wunderkind striker Erling Haaland and his barrage of goals actually made the team better. Sitting five points off first place and having just lost to rival Manchester United, manager Pep Guardiola declared the title race out of reach. “I don’t care about the Premier League or the Carabao Cup, we cannot win,” he said. The sky-blue machine looked surprisingly fallible.
So with the season seemingly in disarray, Guardiola, the master tinkerer, did what he does best. He made a slight tweak to a tactical evolution he himself had pioneered, and City rattled off a run of 25 matches without a loss that secured the league title and has it within arm’s reach of two more trophies. In a season defined by narrow margins, that one tweak has City poised to contend for a historic treble heading into Saturday’s FA Cup final.
