Manchester City supporters have numerous issues with the club but the team may never have been more appealing to neutrals under Pep Guardiola
Manchester City's Norwegian striker #09 Erling Haaland (R) celebrates scoring the team's third goal with Manchester City's English midfielder #47 Phil Foden and Manchester City's English midfielder #33 Nico O'Reilly during the English Premier League football match between Manchester City and Fulham at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester, north west England, on February 11, 2026. (Photo by Paul ELLIS / AFP via Getty Images) / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE. No use with unauthorized audio, video, data, fixture lists, club/league logos or 'live' services. Online in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No video emulation. Social media in-match use limited to 120 images. An additional 40 images may be used in extra time. No use in betting publications, games or single club/league/player publications. /
Manchester City have a young and exciting team this season that are far from perfect
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Gary Neville had the sixth sense on commentary for Manchester City's win over Liverpool. Bernardo Silva scored seconds after the former Manchester United defender said City's leaders had to step up, and then he called bedlam just before Rayan Cherki sent the ball on its way to an unguarded net in the 98th minute. As Erling Haaland barked at a bemused Marc Guehi at full-time, why didn't Cherki simply pass to him instead?
Maybe he didn't see him, maybe he didn't think he would make such a weird connection when he shot, but the football fan in you likes to think that Cherki knew exactly what he was doing and executed it to perfection. At the end of a pulsating game between two of the Premier League entertainers, one of the biggest mavericks in the game thought the best ending would be to send a pea-roller into the Liverpool net so that everyone could watch two of the fastest players on the pitch desperately sprint half the length of the pitch while watching it agonisingly roll beyond them.
We may never know, but the action neatly summed up what Cherki has brought to England - in many ways, he has already been the brilliant entertainer that everyone said Pep Guardiola would never let happen with Jack Grealish - and the chaos that has seeped into City matches this season. Where once everybody knew what they were getting with Pep Guardiola's side, their biggest consistency in recent weeks has been inconsistency.
Five Premier League wins in a row? We'll follow that up with one in the next six. Best performance of the season away at Newcastle in the cup? We'll follow that up with dismal defeats at United and Bodo. Until Sunday, City were the only Premier League team not to have conceded in the first half of matches in 2026, and the only team not to have scored in the second period.
That has brought frustration for City fans, with a number of leads thrown away in recent weeks and the players stepping in to refund the tickets of any supporters who paid to watch them lose in Bodo in the Champions League. There is a long way to go before the class of 2026 are loved anywhere near as much as the Centurions or the Treble winners.
This team are trying though, and they seem to care - which is an improvement on last season when everything seemed to crumble. Blues know that this side are nowhere near the finished article after so much change in the transfer window, but they appreciate the effort and like that the team are challenging again.
Last season's fall from City has also served as a reset for how they are seen by everyone else. The Premier League charges are still lingering but even they no longer feel as damning now that the Blues no longer dominate.
Nobody likes a serial winner, so for all the fabulous football played by Guardiola and his outstanding squad on their way to six titles in seven years opinions of them grew worse and worse. City winning became so boring to everyone else that it was as if they and the league were dismissed before it had even started every year as some sort of pre-determined outcome that meant if it happened it wasn't legitimate; 'lack of jeopardy' became something to downgrade City's achievements, simply for making something incredibly difficult look easier than it was.
Moving from Ederson and John Stones to Gianluigi Donnarumma and Abdukodir Khusanov in defence has opposition teams as giddy as hyenas when City try to play out from the back, Guardiola wants to shout at his maverick Cherki as often as he wants to kiss him, the robot Erling Haaland has malfunctioned in recent weeks and Rodri isn't expected to hit top form until he pulls on a Spain shirt in the US this summer. These are problems for City to overcome, but they make things more interesting.
And just because it is different, it doesn't mean it is bad for the Blues. Donnarumma spent all afternoon at Anfield looking like a man under pressure, only to pull off a world-class save to secure the win for them, Khusanov has been incredibly solid in starting 10 games in a row over the last month and on top of being one of the most creative players in the league Cherki's rabona made for one of the best goals of the season.
Add in the fact that their incredibly popular superstar Haaland has decided to become a professional Youtuber this season as well as making City the top scorers in the league and there really is a lot to go at. Their 3-0 win over Fulham may have been well short of the nine goals the reverse fixture produced, but their games have still produced a healthy number of thrillers.
All of that helps to make City more likable at a time when they are jostling with Mikel Arteta's Arsenal, who won't win many popularity contests - even against a club with 115 charges hanging over them. The favourites are usually disliked automatically, while their reputation for relying on set-pieces goes against them and Arteta has the intensity and obsessiveness of Guardiola without the ability to charm the masses or win new supporters to his cause.
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That puts City in the strange position of probably having more support to win a title than they have ever had under Guardiola. Nobody quite knows what to make of the team - including the manager - and that is a refreshing change from the big bad winning machine that they were seen as when they began to dominate the league by breaking every record going.
City's flaws may yet see them fall short in the league - their midweek win at Fulham saw another second half that wasn't at the level of the first - and their fans continue to have issues with the matchday and ticketing experience but the team may never have been more appealing to neutrals.