It must just be tremendously exciting, mustn’t it? Being the team doing the chasing at this point of the season and hitting that moment when suddenly all things seem possible and you truly start to think “it’s happening”.
For Man City, that should really be “it’s happening again”. This is what they do. Pep Guardiola puts it down to the fact the sun only comes out in Manchester from April onwards, but whatever the reason, something happens to him and City after the final international break of the season.
It doesn’t always work. It’s not always required. But the Man City April flow state is one of the most reliable harbingers of spring we have in this country. When the clocks go forward, so do City.
Last season they’d already bollocksed things up far too badly when the clocks went back to have any impact. Liverpool and indeed Arsenal were off into the distance by that point. Still, though; their post-March-interlull record in the Premier League read P9 W7 D2.
And that is entirely standard for City. After easing to victory at Chelsea to take full advantage of Arsenal’s stumble against Bournemouth, City’s record after the final international break across the last five seasons now stands at P40 W33 D6 L1. That’s 105 points at a points per game of 2.63. Ludicrous.
Even the one defeat is of no consequence; it came at Brentford, on the final day of the 22/23 season when, with the Premier League leg of their treble already safely in the bag, Guardiola rested most of his starting XI for the upcoming FA Cup and Champions League finals.
City’s momentum at this specific stage of the season is measurable and consistent. And this season the timing just looks like it might be absolutely perfect.
If you aren’t getting giddy about it as a City fan then you don’t have blood in your veins. This transitional, work-in-progress City side really might be about to do something that no other club in the history of English football has done and claim the domestic treble.
It would be the second time Guardiola has done it, and surely even sweeter than the first given this would be done with a new-look team that we’d all been happy to write off.
READ: 16 Conclusions from Chelsea 0-3 Man City: Guehi, Cherki, and the looming banterpocalypse
The Carabao is already secured. City are prohibitive odds-on to sort out Southampton and then either Chelsea or Leeds in the FA Cup.
And if they beat Arsenal at the Etihad on Sunday then for the first time this season they will be Premier League favourites too as Arsenal forlornly contemplate bottlepocalypse and that guy with his sealed water bottle goes double viral along with what we’ve just realised with something approaching horror will be several thousand copycats at the Etihad this weekend, up to and including at least one Gallagher brother. And you all know which one.
There’s also a delicious ‘styles make fights’ element to all this. Guardiola and Arteta share a lot of the same ideas about what makes a great football team, but there’s no doubt that this season they are on divergent paths. Arteta has leant ever harder and more stubbornly into an ‘effectiveness over entertainment’ approach that is absolutely fine right up until it stops being effective.
Arsenal are not the only team ever to prioritise and weaponise the opportunities presented by set-pieces, but they are an extreme case. Especially among elite clubs with the resources they have at their disposal.
City’s Guardiola never quite looked like Arteta’s Arsenal. But they did also become quite boring for an extended period of time. The specifics of the approach were different, but the mechanical, robotic rigidity of the plan was the same. City would City teams to death in much the same way Arsenal have – until these last few weeks – Arsenaled teams to death this season.
That’s no longer true. Guardiola, so obviously and visibly stressed out last season, has slightly let his hair down. Yes, we know, but you know what we mean.
This iteration of City is far freer, far more capable of expressing itself and given the licence to do so.
One wonders what Jack Grealish in his pomp might have done with the licence now afforded to, say, Jeremy Doku. But such laments are for another time. Never mind what it might have meant for the Clamours of our yesterdays, just enjoy what it means for today.
For a long time when they simply hoovered up Premier League titles, City had something close to a perfect team. But perfection can be quite boring. This City team is not. This City team has a joker genius at its beating heart in Rayan Cherki, with Doku and Antoine Semenyo dancing around him.
And it still looks like a relentless, trophy-stalking Arsenal-engulfing machine. What times these are.