For someone looking to support their theory that Manchester City should be the strong favourite to win the Premier League title this season, a 3-1 friendly defeat to Arsenal just before the campaign begins might seem like bad news.
Only a bold writer would attempt to use that defeat as the starting point for their argument in City’s favour. And yet, that second bit is what will happen here: I’m going to tell you why Manchester City really should win league.
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Okay, be in no doubt this past Saturday afternoon will have been mildly disappointing for the club and its fans. City was comprehensively out-passed by Arsenal, a team nobody expects to challenge for anything this season. The Blues looked disjointed in defence without the injured Matija Nastasić and it didn’t look particularly coherent up front either.
But underlying and overpowering each of these issues was this: Manuel Pellegrini, the new manager in charge, was able to bring on about £80million’s worth of players in that game. However slowly his side starts, those resources will be difficult for others to match over the course of a season.
When you try to predict how City’s season will turn out, the point to make is that their squad is unmatched in terms of balance or quality. Following Jose Mourinho’s rule about how you win titles, City has two quality players for every position. Neither of their Premier League rivals can match that depth and anyone who thinks otherwise is probably looking at the wrong squad sheets.
Observe what the other contenders have.
Chelsea has half a dozen top-tier creative players, and congratulations to them for that – they are all fantastic to watch. But alongside that talent, it has a crisis in central midfield. Michael Essien is no longer what he was, Frank Lampard can no longer legitimately call himself a footballer and Jon Obi Mikel is Jon Obi Mikel. Beyond those three, they have Ramires, who appears to be a footballer without an actual position, and they have Marko Van Ginkel, a kid and new to the league.
Even in pre-season games Chelsea’s deficiency in midfield has been a problem. And the same goes for Manchester United. Tom Cleverley and Ryan Giggs started the Community Shield for United: does either one sound like a compelling reason why David Moyes will end the season on a parade bus? The two best teams expected to challenge City will enter the new campaign devoid of anything that could reasonably call itself a central midfield.
But City need not even rely on Chelsea and Manchester United.
Most people will accept that City has probably had the largest number of quality players in its squad for each of the last two seasons – and therefore the potential, each time, to be the best team in the league. Last season it didn’t achieve that potential because it somehow left Roberto Mancini in charge, a manager who used his press conferences as platforms to be passive-aggressive towards his own players, and who wrote-off the first two months of the season by attempting to play three at the back.
This time, City has a sensible manager, who we must assume will not sabotage his own team. Pellegrini will improve City merely by not messing the team up, the kind of accolade to which all managers must aspire.
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And the new sporting director has done something similar. The mistakes of last summer’s transfer window have clearly been learnt from this time.
Where last summer, dawdling meant that there was Scott Sinclair, Matija Nastasić, Jack Rodwell, Javi Garcia and, for reasons which remain unclear, Maicon, this time there’s Stevan Jovetic, Alvaro Negredo, Jesus Navas and Fernandinho, all signed early and with a clear sense of purpose behind each of them.
The step up in quality is clear even if you just take the clubs these players signed from as an indicator – Shaktar Donestk, Fiorentina and Sevilla are all strong sides in their own right.
Although none of this should be applauded too loudly, because failing as badly as last time would actually be grimly impressive. But there’s no denying that City are in a far stronger position than they were last August. Navas adds pace to a midfield which clearly lacked it before, Fernandinho removes the need to continue paying Gareth Barry appearance money, Negredo replaces Carlos Tevez up front and Jovetic takes Mario Balotelli’s place, minus the trouble.
Losing to Arsenal a week before the season starts might hint that City won’t hit its stride quickly, but it has a lot more than that in its favour, including the league’s best collection of players.
At the very least it doesn’t look like Manchester City will ruin its own chances this time.
Ethan Dean-Richards in a London-based writer. Follow Ethan on Twitter.