Manchester City and Liverpool were both phenomenal, Antonio Conte and Eddie Howe both thrived as mid-season arrivals and Jesse Marsch did it.
Step this way for the losers.
Manchester City
“Please, never again this way,” begged Vincent Kompany. “Please, never again.” Yet a decade on from making the inevitable seem anything but and reaching the coveted destination through a particularly convoluted route, Manchester City again stumbled along that increasingly fine line between success and failure.
They would have been branded the sport’s biggest bottlers, squanderers of a 14-point lead Pep Guardiola recently described as “fake”. Those spurious claims about the squad lacking character, leaders or personality by design would have been given credence. This group would have been marked as tactically phenomenal and physically remarkable but mentally weak in exiting Europe in ludicrous fashion and allowing their historic domestic achievements to be overshadowed.
It is simultaneously true that some detractors will seek to belittle and diminish a fourth Premier League title in five years as either predictable or the natural consequence of their resources. But the essence of this coronation and the countless examples of money being no guarantee of glory at other clubs dispels both critiques.
Earlier this season, Guardiola and his players faced a new line of condemnation. It was suggested that this team was not entertaining enough, that their dominance had become boring. The passes were crisp, the movement was perfect and the goals flowed but there was a robotic soul to their play, something which struggled to stir the emotions. That was not Manchester City’s problem – their only responsibility is to themselves and their fans – yet it absolutely affected their wider image.
Those same sceptics who scoffed at their emotionless, automatic brilliance would have revelled in the first half at the London Stadium, or after three quarters of an hour had passed…
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