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While Manchester City winning their third consecutive league title with games to spare may make it seem like it was a one horse race in the league this season, that wasn’t the case. Arsenal pushed Pep Guardiola’s men as far as they could. City triumphing felt inevitable, especially with a destroyer of teams like Erling Haaland in the attack but Arsenal led the league for more days than any team to not win the title with Mikel Arteta’s team-leading the league for 278 days.
City faltered a bit after the World Cup and the title was in Arsenal’s hands but City took care of business when it mattered most winning their two matches against the Gunners by a combined score of 7-2. The moral blows sunk in as Arsenal went on a three-match winless streak in April prior to losing to City.
The turnaround for Pep Guardiola’s men started before that as Kyle Walker pointed out to NBC Sports during City’s trophy celebrations.
“We ground out that result against Liverpool which was as you know a top team. So, I think from then on, we always believed that we could do it,” Walker said amid the celebrations. “Obviously, we went to Leeds then which was a tough place, and ground out a result there and it’s just kind of carried on from then.”
After the World Cup, City and quite a few teams around the world were struggling due to a lack of rhythm but this is where Guardiola is at his best. Never afraid to make a change, Joao Cancelo exited stage left to Bayern Munich while Manuel Akanji who had come in from Dortmund over the summer took on a bigger role and helped the team adapt to a formation shift.
City’s shift to a 3-2-4-1 meant that Walker wasn’t even a guaranteed starter as John Stones became the inverted right back with Nathan Ake taking up a spot as the left center back to contain speedy wingers and forwards. Guardiola even publicly stated that Walker — who has been involved in all five of…
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