Man City’s toughest opponent? The asterisk by their titles

Bayer Leverkusen’s historic Bundesliga title, which broke Bayern Munich’s run of 11 consecutive German championships, leaves the Premier League at risk of assuming an unwanted status.

For more than 30 years, the English top flight has traded off a reputation for competitiveness and unpredictability, but it is now six Manchester City wins from becoming the most predictable major league in Europe.

There have been three different winners of Spain’s La Liga in as many years and Italy’s Serie A title has changed hands in each of the past four seasons.

Here, by contrast, City are well-placed to become the first-ever club to win four consecutive English titles after their nearest challengers Arsenal and Liverpool both lost at home on Sunday to leave the holders two points clear at the top of the table with just half a dozen games to play.

Midfielder Bernardo Silva yesterday said their “inspiration and motivation” is a double-treble — a feat which has never before been done, and would give them a compelling case to be the greatest club side of all-time.

It feels fitting that the peak of the Premier League’s unpredictability came in 2016, when Leicester were crowned champions against all odds, only for Guardiola to pitch up at City the same summer, and change the landscape of English football.

City have since won five of the past six titles, only missing out in Guardiola’s first season and to Liverpool in the Covid-disrupted 2019-20 campaign.

Arsenal and Liverpool have both been outstanding this term and, if City win another championship, they will both probably finish with points totals that would have been good enough for the title in the majority of seasons pre-Guardiola.

If City win the title again, we will be living through an historic and unprecedented era of one-club dominance of English football, although it rarely feels that way.

More than admiration, City seem to inspire in most opposition supporters a kind of apathy of hopelessness; it is simply so difficult for rivals to expect to finish above a club which has put the resources of the Abu Dhabi state behind the pursuit of excellence and, in the process, may have broken the rules.

City’s hegemony has not only damaged the Premier League’s brand, it is deeply uncomfortable for English football’s powerbrokers while the club is facing 115 charges for a raft of alleged breaches of financial fair play rules between 2009 and 2018 — during which time they won the title three times.

At the foot of the table, this season is at risk of being defined by sanctions for financial breaches, with Everton and Nottingham Forest both in the thick of a relegation scrap after being docked points during the campaign.

At the top, however, City are free to march towards another crown despite the charges against them and — based on well-informed suggestions about the timeline for their case — they may be able to win next season’s title too (in what is expected to be Guardiola’s final year at the club) before a verdict.

As City inch towards more history, there remains a whopping great asterisk against this entire era of English and European football, and it is a grim look for the Premier League that this season may be determined by financial charges for some clubs but not others.

Should City be found guilty in future of breaking rules, how could their era of supreme dominance and raft of trophies ever be properly redressed?

By the time of a verdict, Arsenal and Liverpool may have missed out, doomed by running impressive campaigns which belonged to a previous era.