A new year brings new challenges and things to look forward to for Manchester City and their supporters.
With a 10-point lead at the top of the Premier League table, Pep Guardiola's side look odds-on to win back-to-back titles for the second time in five years.
In the Champions League another tough knockout stage awaits, but City will relish the chance to go one better than last season.
However, 2022 also brings fresh worries and concerns, the chief of those being Guardiola's future.
The visionary coach has 18 months remaining on his current contract, and while City obviously want him to extend his stay at the Etihad Stadium, there is no telling what Pep will decide to do.
But fear not; there is proof that City will not suffer the same fate that cross-town rivals Manchester United did when their own stalwart manager departed.
When Sir Alex Ferguson retired in 2013 United had just recaptured the Premier League from City, easing to a record 20th top-flight title with an 11-point gap over the Blues.
Yet over the years that followed, it became clear that Ferguson's abilities as a man-manager and pragmatic tactician had masked the state of disrepair his squad had fallen into.
He personally chose his successor, David Moyes, but the Scotsman withered in the shadow of his fellow countryman's legacy. The playing squad was shot to pieces, and Moyes had no chance of extracting even a fraction of the quality Ferguson had done.
As we all know, the appointments of Louis van Gaal, Jose Mourinho and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer did little to fix things, as Ferguson left behind a club with no structure, no identity and no forward planning.
Whenever Guardiola decides to seek pastures new, the same will not happen at City.
In his book Pep Guardiola: The Evolution , Marti Perarnau quotes the famous Italian coach Arrigo Sacchi, inspiration to Guardiola and fellow disciple of Total Football.
"Any coach who takes over from Guardiola has a problem because it will be impossible for anyone to do better. But he will have one advantage: the key's in the ignition and the engine's running."
That is precisely why City will not suffer a decade of despair when Guardiola leaves like United did post-Ferguson.
The playing ideology engrained in the players, the boardroom structures built at the club and the type of players being produced by the City Football Academy mean that whoever comes in to replace Pep has a solid foundation to work with. They will have no need to try and change too much.
That is partly why Mikel Arteta and Patrick Vieira are being touted as potential Guardiola replacements. The respective Arsenal and Crystal Palace managers both have experience coaching the football that now makes up City's DNA.
Arteta was Guardiola's assistant at City for three years before he left for Arsenal, an experience that made him fluent in Guardiola's methods and friendly with many of the players.
Vieira - while he has never coached at City - managed New York City FC, an outpost of the City Football Group in which all member clubs adopt a similar style and methodology. As he showed when Palace secured a 2-0 win at the Etihad Stadium earlier this season, he is an astute tactician in his own right.
Of course, there are other candidates too, such as Ajax's Erik ten Hag - he worked with Guardiola at Bayern Munich and is arguably the coach of an elite European club most like Pep's in terms of playing style.
The important point is that whoever comes in will be set up to succeed. They will likely struggle for a while as they implement minor tweaks and the absence of Guardiola's genius is felt, but ultimately they will be well-positioned to avoid a United-style disaster.
Who do you think should succeed Pep Guardiola at City when the time comes? Follow our City Is Ours writer Alex Brotherton on Twitter to get involved in the discussion and give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
