Champions League winner explains why Manchester City will not be 'the dominant force in the Premier League for a while'
It's going to take "a while" for Manchester City to regain their status as the Premier League's "dominant force," according to Dwight Yorke.
City are 20 points off the pace in the Premier League title race and will likely not extend their run of consecutive league titles to five, ending their historic streak at four titles in a row.
With the club's resources and reputation, the possibility of quickly rebuilding remains, but Yorke is unconvinced that it will happen.
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Instead, the former Champions League winner believes that a rise back to the top for Pep Guardiola's side will be a slower process.
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"I just think that there is a phase in life, a phase in football that everyone goes through," Yorke told casinobeats.com. "You've got the up and down. I think that they will come back slightly better, but it will never be the same.
"They will go through that sort of phase that Liverpool had, that Man United are currently going through. They will still be very competitive, but they'll be losing a lot of their players and then you're asking players to come in and fit into that system, to start winning again. It’s a complete rebuild required.
"This group of players have been a unit for five-to-six years. Now they're starting to disperse one by one, or two by two. I'm sure there will be more moving on at the end of the season and there will be fresh faces joining the club.
"To get them playing to the kind of standard that they can play, that's going to be challenging. I don't think that is as easy as some people think it is. It's much more difficult when you go through a transition as a team.
"I don't think City will be the dominant force in the Premier League for a while now. They have been dominating the Premier League for so long. I think the time has come where they're going to find that transition very challenging and, in many ways, it starts now.
"[Guardiola has] seen it coming and has tried to act on it with recruitment, but it hasn’t really changed anything. It won't be the same at City for a long, long time."
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