Like a cobra moving through the grass, City are creeping up on another treble by stealth

AMID the excited rattle and hum of another Premier League season finale, Manchester City’s relentless progress to what would be an unprecedented and quite stunning consecutive treble continues almost in silence.

This is not a sly dig at the atmosphere at the Etihad. That’s for others to debate. Personally, I have never found anything wrong with it.

No, it’s not that. It’s a reference to — I suppose — how a lion hunts. Or how a cobra moves through the grass. Silently. Without fuss. But successfully. Oh so predictably successfully.

Because this is the modern City. All that noisy neighbours stuff of the early Abu Dhabi era is no more. The heady thrill of Premier League title No1 in 2012 exists only in the mind and on mobile phone footage.

Even the initial sex appeal of Pep Guardiola’s football has faded to something slightly less expansive. More risk-averse and predictable. There’s that word again. Predictable. It follows City everywhere in a way that it never has in relation to an English football club in our lifetime.

Can we safely say that City will win the Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League for the second season running? No, we cannot.

Does it look a pretty solid bet right now? It absolutely has to.

Because in order for it not to happen, somebody will have to beat them and the further we go into Guardiola’s time at City the less often that happens, particularly at this stage of the season.

So despite the emotion attached to Jurgen Klopp’s last lap at Liverpool, the adrenaline of Arsenal’s return to form and prominence in the title race under Mikel Arteta and all the enduring chatter around managers like Erik ten Hag and Eddie Howe, the real story of this season is once again simmering away beneath the surface.

Manchester City are that story. Again. It’s just that sometimes it’s hard to notice.

City last lost a game of football on December 6, 2023, 1-0 away at Aston Villa. They have lost once in a run of 28 games in all competitions going back to the start of October. Recently, they played averagely in drawing with Chelsea and winning 1-0 at Bournemouth, and the foolish and desperate began to talk up a drop in form. Then they went to Luton in the FA Cup and scored six and that put an end to all that.

And that is what this City do. They win relentlessly and quietly in a manner previously alien to us. And that is why a second treble is so very possible.

Will Manchester United beat them in the Premier League on Sunday? Highly unlikely. FC Copenhagen in the Champions League next Wednesday? No chance. Newcastle in the FA Cup? Hard to see it.

Liverpool at Anfield a week on Sunday? Maybe but even if they do, would the smart money really be on Klopp’s injury-hit, overexerted squad holding City at bay over the 10 games that would then remain?

Absolutely everything that City do will be viewed with an eyebrow raised until the matter of their 115 Premier League charges is settled. For some, nothing they do will mean much until they can prove themselves to be financially clean. I understand that.

However, that doesn’t make all of us blind to what they do on the field and in particular the influence Guardiola has on the way football is played in this country.

We will miss Klopp when he goes. We have much to thank the Liverpool manager for. We will miss the sheer unrelenting theatre of his team’s football. But he will not leave a footprint as large as the one Guardiola will when he follows him out.

I was listening to Wayne Rooney talk on a Gary Neville podcast this week and the former United forward told of how he attempted to implement some of Guardiola’s use of full backs during

his time in charge at Birmingham City. We may laugh as it didn’t work. Rooney was sacked after 15 games.

But talk to coaches in England at all levels of the pyramid and Guardiola’s teachings and preachings are the ones so many of them return to time and time again. Bright football men and women who want to get better at what they do take their lead from what happens on a Saturday at the Etihad.

If City do win the treble again, is it good for our game? I don’t see why it isn’t. Approve of their methods or not, Guardiola’s City have been driving standards at the top of the pyramid for so long now. It’s up to the rest to follow.

There are stories and plots everywhere you look in the Premier League right now. City are rarely one of them but a hard truth remains. The real cold power continues to wear sky blue.