Exhaustion at Pep Guardiola’s inaugural press conference set in well before the great man actually appeared through the door on which the Sky News cameras had been focusing, as if a piece of Manchester City’s furniture might already be imbued with Barcelona greatness. When the moment came, the cameras managed to miss it, so there was no exciting reveal, no drum roll or entrance through a cloud of dry ice. Nevertheless it was good to see Guardiola take his seat because it meant the event had started and all the pointless prefacing speculation about what he might say could be dispensed with, though when his first utterance turned out to be “We will try to do our best for our people” and Sky rolled it across the bottom of the screen as breaking news rather than the winning line in a banality contest it was time for another lie down in a darkened room.
The north-west has been a bit much to take in the last few days. At one end of the East Lancs Road the Liverpool owners were tying up Jürgen Klopp to an extended contract on improved terms, while at the other José Mourinho was breezing into Old Trafford to deny allegations that he overlooks emerging young talent and promise not to try to wind up Guardiola at City. It is not a two-team league, he pointed out, quite reasonably. Waste time and energy trying to psyche out Guardiola just because of an enmity that existed in Spain and you might find a resurgent Liverpool, Arsenal or Tottenham sneaking past you.
Perhaps even Leicester, who, in case anyone has forgotten, won the title last season, but are probably back out at something approaching 5000-1 again now that the Manchester clubs are making all the noise.
Future historians will most likely surmise that such a feat was only possible because the three most likely champions – that is, the teams who have actually won titles in the recent past – all took their eye off the ball last season. That is true up to a point, with Chelsea the most conspicuous sufferers of unforeseen problems and unexpected decline.
Manchester City were always likely to be treading water waiting for Guardiola, and injuries to key personnel in Kevin De Bruyne and Vincent Kompany did not help. More breaking news from Sky: My dream is for Vincent Kompany is for him to be fit.
Manchester United were in decline but in denial about it. They kept pretending for a ridiculous length of time that Louis van Gaal was the answer rather than the problem until putting a peg on their nose on FA Cup final day – of all days, when their manager had just won something and was busy being photographed with Sir Alex Ferguson to prove it – and letting it slip out that talks with the antichrist had been taking place all along.
Mourinho was right about one thing. There is no point picking on Guardiola in such a competitive league. That does not mean he will behave himself, Arsène Wenger was rarely a realistic title rival but it did not stop him getting the treatment, but United could not even manage a top-four finish last season and Mourinho’s first priority has to be to improve that outlook.
Ditto for Guardiola, whose new club only just made the Champions League and will have to survive a qualifying round as a result. The new Manchester pair would be better off looking at London than each other. Arsenal finished second last season, their best result in more than a decade, Spurs are still improving under Mauricio Pochettino, and Chelsea can be expected to be a force again with Antonio Conte proving at Euro 2016 to be as magnetic a personality and as thoughtful a planner as Mourinho himself.
Even West Ham, who took such great strides with Slaven Bilic last season, cannot be discounted for a top-four place and into this extremely tight equation still must be factored Liverpool and Leicester, not to mention Everton and Southampton.
Plainly some big, important, expensive acquisitions are going to miss out. Only one team can win the title, only three more can join them in the Champions League. Yet though the forthcoming season promises to be frantic, there are smaller, more achievable goals each new manager can work towards.
It is clearly Mourinho’s intention, for instance, to put the swagger back into United. Merely by signing Zlatan Ibrahimovic he put three years of muddled thinking and mediocrity behind him and the addition of Henrikh Mkhitaryan and promises to Wayne Rooney and Marcus Rashford should reassure anyone who has him down as merely a defensive-minded coach. United’s apparent willingness to pay through the nose to bring Paul Pogba back is an indication that money is not an issue and that Mourinho is less woolly-minded than his immediate predecessors in targeting specific areas of the team that need improvement.
City’s owners would like Guardiola to turn their club into Barcelona, a laudable aspiration but one that might take a while to achieve short of a fell swoop for Lionel Messi, Neymar or Luis Suárez. While that might be fanciful, with City’s financial backing the possibility of further major signings should not be discounted. Note how the club are now throwing money at Leonardo Bonucci. Perhaps Guardiola did not see enough of John Stones at Euro 2016 to be convinced. Who did?
In all probability City did not hire Guardiola because someone with his technical proficiency might be able to make something of Raheem Sterling, they also wanted to remove the barrier to signing the best players around. It might not happen overnight, and progress on the pitch may not be quite as smooth as the Barcelona blueprint demands, but with Guardiola at the helm City can be expected to up their transfer market game still further.
All of which leaves Arsenal and Chelsea looking a little small time in fighting over Álvaro Morata, a player who did not harm his reputation in Euro 2016 but was not the sensation many had anticipated. In fact Arsenal and Chelsea’s budgets and plans are anything but small time but that sort of distortion is going to be a recurring theme this season, if the new television deal means Bournemouth can now afford £15m bids for uncapped Liverpool squad players.
Last season supposedly taught us that the Premier League is not all about stupid money, if a clever manager with a diligent and determined set of players could triumph against the odds. It seems to be a lesson no one wanted to learn. Just about everyone has a clever manager now and, to paraphrase Ferguson from a time when Manchester United were still being parsimonious, kamikaze spending is what you do to prove it.
