Five reasons why Manchester City might not definitely win the Premier League title

It’s already starting to look a lot like Manchester City might win another Premier League title. But don’t switch off yet – here are quite literally five reasons why it might not already be a fait accompli.

Fair warning: one of those is that Spurs might win it; we did warn you we’d gone totally all-in doolally over Angeball.

Manchester City haven’t really strengthened
In the short term anyway. Compelling argument that they didn’t really need to, but it should at least in theory bring some other teams into the equation. Sure, they’ve signed the best young centre-back from the World Cup in Josko Gvardiol. Good signing, fair play. And his international team-mate Mateo Kovacic has come in from Chelsea in a move undoubtedly with a short-term imperative in mind.

But centre-back wasn’t really a point of concern for City last year – any club that can cheerfully wave Aymeric Laporte off to Saudi is frankly taking the absolute piss – and in any case Gvardiol as a 21-year-old learning Our League will surely have to pay a hefty Guardiola First Year Tax and be at best vaguely underwhelming before dominating the league for years to come from 2024 onwards. Kovacic replaces Ilkay Gundogan in the squad and, while he’s got three years on the German, we’re not having that as an upgrade. Riyad Mahrez’s departure slightly depletes the crucial ‘tricky attacker’ options, too.

Even before Kevin De Bruyne’s hefty injury setback we’d have put City as ‘very slightly weaker’ compared to last season. And remember the ancient rule of Our League: if you’re standing still then you’re going backwards.

Erling Haaland might get injured
Part of the reason for the general air of ‘Well, City are going to win it again aren’t they?’ resignation is that many of the potential challengers are missing someone capable of scoring 30 goals and taking the pressure off in games that might otherwise get fraught. Chelsea don’t have it. Manchester United probably don’t. Arsenal don’t. Liverpool do but have other problems. Spurs no longer do, if we’re still counting them.

Well, what if City no longer had that player either? As far as we know, Erling Haaland cannot be injured by conventional methods, but that’s currently only a hypothesis. Maybe there is a weakness in there somewhere, perhaps a ray-shielded particle exhaust vent somewhere at the back of his knee? Anyway, if Haaland were taken out of the equation somehow, then that really would shift the balance of power.

As long as you pretend they don’t just have World Cup winner Julian Alvarez right there anyway, with his record of scoring a Premier League goal every 150 minutes. And just cast from your mind entirely the fact City have proven themselves entirely capable of winning the Premier League without a number nine at all anyway. So even if you do manage to injure the unstoppable Norwegian robot it probably won’t matter. Still, though.

READ: Chelsea and Spurs men among five who look ‘like a new signing’ this season

Arsenal aren’t being shit and spawny, they’re Doing What Champions Do
Arsenal gave it a right good go last season, didn’t they? Right up until April they had City very worried. Sounds like more of a dig than it’s meant to, because keeping City honest for that amount of time is very impressive and utterly exhausting. As Arsenal showed by rather collapsing over the finish line in a well-beaten second place of a race they’d led for almost the entire distance.

Logic dictates that Arsenal’s relatively young squad and young manager should all be stronger and hardier for the experience having been exposed to the white-hot glow of a proper title challenge. They’ve demonstrably strengthened the squad in the summer window. Nobody can accuse them of not going for it.

But they’ve also been, frankly, a little bit shit in their opening two games against teams who spent most of last season as part of that large and undignified relegation squabble. Arsenal not yet finding the elan and spark of last season doesn’t help the air of inevitability currently around the league, but look at their points total. That’s right. Six points. All the points. The same as City. What if they’ve not in fact been A Bit Shit but have in fact been Doing What Champions Do and turned in two sub-par performances but suffered zero negative consequence? Catch fire now, and there’s no harm done.

Anything is possible with Angeball
Yes. City are so very obviously winning the league that number four on our list of reasons why they might not is f***ing Tottenham. But wait, consider the facts. Look at what Ange Postecoglou has already achieved. He’s already turned a fanbase that was on the verge of outright mutiny last season into a giant Aussie-loving cult. He’s transformed the whole vibe of a club that spent last season being miserable as shit even when they were inexplicably winning. And he’s done all that in the space of a couple of months dominated by the protracted and painful sale of arguably the club’s greatest ever player.

We’ve made this point before, but it’s a compelling one. Imagine going back to the end of last season and telling people that Spurs would get in a manager with no big-league experience, from a country outside the sport’s traditional power base, that Kane would be sold, and that the mood around the club in mid-August would be positively giddy with excitement and expectation. You’d be slapped in the face and told to stop being ridiculous. And rightly so.

But it’s where we are. If Ange can do that, then surely he can also lead Spurs to a first league title in 63 years? Far more straightforward, that. They’ve made a good start, with four points from an opening pair of games that ranked among the hardest of anyone on paper. and remember: they are guaranteed three points and a clean sheet against City at White Hart Lane 2.0, which can’t hurt.

Another unlikely challenger may emerge
Well… they might. It could happen. Leicester won the title and they can’t even be bothered to be in the Premier League now. Arsenal came close last season which absolutely nobody was suggesting in August. Brighton could do it. Or Brentford – they’ve started well, haven’t they?

Even Liverpool, the club with by far the greatest City-bothering pedigree in recent years, could have a go despite their bold experiment with putting random players in central midfield just to see what happens. Newcastle might kick on. Villa are good, despite constantly losing players to injury, and we’re confident enough that ‘thrashing Everton’ is probably a truer reflection of where they are then ‘thrashed by Newcastle’.

Anyone could do it. Well not Chelsea or United, obviously. They’re terrible. But almost anyone.