The Unhealthy Dominance of Manchester City
The final day of the season has come and gone, leaving behind a trail of emotions for Aston Villa, Manchester City, and Arsenal. While City’s phenomenal wealth and supreme competence have led to an excellence that is both predictable and a little dull, Aston Villa deserves great credit for securing qualification for the Champions League for the first time in the tournament’s modern guise.
“You can put that down to the brilliance of Pep Guardiola, the resources behind the club, their spend on wages, the acuity of their recruitment or the 115 charges relating to alleged breaches of financial regulations, but superiority of that kind is unhealthy for a league that has historically prided itself on its competitiveness.”
The great title race ended with a distinct sense of anticlimax. When Arsenal drew at City at the end of March, Arsenal led the table by four points having played a game more. There was some thought then that the goalless draw suited Arsenal more because it maintained their lead. Win their seven remaining games and they’d be champions. But given how the March game went, its drabness, the relative comfort with which Arsenal contained City, there was also a sense that it represented an opportunity missed for Arsenal.
Aston Villa, meanwhile, deserve great credit for securing qualification for the Champions League.
Could Arsenal have been a little more proactive? Could they have put clear water between themselves and City? Because it turned out they needed it. There was much debate last season as to whether Arsenal had bottled the title race, or whether their late-season stumble was a natural result of their comparatively slender squad. In truth, it was probably a bit of both: the collapses from comfortable positions away at Liverpool and West Ham had little to do with the players available.
Arsenal’s title hopes were dashed despite a strong season.
This season, there has been no similar capitulation. They will look at defeats to Fulham and West Ham over Christmas and then in the run-in against Aston Villa and know that a win in any one of those would have brought the title, but all teams lose games. Or at least they should.
Manchester City’s dominance is unhealthy for the league.
A total of 89 points with a +62 goal-difference would have won the league last season and in more than half of the Premier League’s 20-team seasons. But what City are doing is out of step with what used to be considered normal. They have won nine out of nine since that draw against Arsenal, all of them by at least two goals. They are unbeaten in 35 games. They have become the first side in the English top-flight’s 136-year history to win the title four seasons in a row.
Manchester City’s dominance is unprecedented in English football history.
English football, it turns out, could handle oligarchs, hedge funds, and foreign states running its clubs when they were brash and inefficient. Phenomenal wealth plus supreme competence (and, perhaps, depending what happens with those 115 charges, something else besides), though, equals an excellence that is predictable and perhaps a little dull.
The Premier League trophy is staying at the Etihad Stadium for another year.
