Manchester City can rewrite history and make it a fab four in a row next season

Goodison Park was practically empty when a lone Manchester City player emerged with a ball to do some extra work.

It’s not unusual for substitutes to do a warm-down after a match but what made this little scene a bit different was his identity: it was Kevin De Bruyne.

Here was the Premier League’s most outstanding talent still doing the things that he has done all his life, honing his technique and refusing to cut any corners. De Bruyne hadn’t been seen in the 3-0 defeat of Everton yet City played almost faultless football — imagine if he had got involved? So it made you think.

Some 20 minutes earlier, Pep Guardiola had bounded over to the away supporters, smiling like a man who knew a mission was about to be accomplished.

City, barring an incredible sequence of events, will be crowned champions this coming weekend. That will happen if Arsenal falter at Nottingham Forest. Failing that, Guardiola’s men will surely take care of Chelsea.

If they retain next season, they become the first English top-flight team to win four in a row

This will put them in rarefied company. Football is all about creating history and City will stand beside Huddersfield (1923-1926), Arsenal (1932-1935), Liverpool (1981-1984) and Manchester United (1998-2001 and 2006-2009) as title winners in three consecutive seasons.

Guardiola has already done so much during his time in Manchester. The first team to win a domestic Treble (2018-19), the first to reach 100 points (2017-18), the team with the most Premier League goals in a season (106, 2017-18). From here, it will be a shock if they don’t complete the Treble and emulate what Manchester United did in 1998-99.

If they do, it won’t have the same dramatic feeling as when United did it.

In that crazy spring 24 years ago, there was jeopardy in every match on the run in: Peter Schmeichel needed to save a penalty in an FA Cup semi-final with Arsenal before Ryan Giggs scored an all-time great goal; the title race went down to the final minutes of the final day. And, of course, there was the stoppage-time winner in the Champions League final in Barcelona against Bayern Munich.

City, by contrast, have never looked in danger during this relentless winning streak that started in February.

Guardiola has moulded an outstanding collection of players that warrant winning the Champions League and, for many, that will be the completion of his journey in Manchester, the scaling of the last peak.

But as you watched them celebrating in Merseyside, the sense was impossible to escape that something even bigger was a realistic target. This, simply, is the best equipped team to do what has never been done before since English football seasons commenced in 1888.

Sir Alex Ferguson is the only manager to win three titles in a row, doing so twice with United

Liverpool also managed to win three English league titles in a row between 1981 and 1984

Title winners four years on the trot? No club in 135 years has been able to do this, Sir Alex Ferguson is the only manager to oversee three titles in a row (Huddersfield, Arsenal and Liverpool all had managerial changes during their sequences) but Guardiola must know that this feat is in his grasp. 

Watching City pick Everton apart, it was impossible to see weakness. The ominous thought for City’s rivals is that they will strengthen again this summer. Those trying to chase down Guardiola’s side are effectively in a foot race with a galloping horse.

Liverpool, United, Chelsea and Newcastle will all improve themselves during the next window, while Arsenal’s progress won’t go unchecked, but the standards City are setting are imposing. 

We are, simply, watching a team — and an exceptional manager — in the process of rewriting history.