After a summer of rebuilding his first team squad, Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola also surprised everyone in the wider world of football in the 2025/26 campaign as he slightly tweaked his preferred playing style to make the side a little bit more potent and better put them on the front foot.
Whilst it naturally took some time for our new faces to bed in and for fans to adjust to a side no longer featuring the likes of legend Kevin De Bruyne, in many ways the year could not have gone much better for us so far and we have likely eclipsed the Premier League betting odds that were available at the start of the year already.
With 31 games played in the domestic Premier League campaign, City find themselves in second spot in the top flight table and the chase is most definitely on for yet another title. We are just six points behind manager Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal side who despite leading the way and holding a massive advantage for the vast majority of the season, are once again showing significant signs of bottling it as the pressure really rises on them at the business end of the year.
The clash with Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium takes place this weekend and many have long believed that it would prove, with hindsight, to be the decider for top spot – but few expected us to have closed the gap as much as we have by the time it rolled around. On top of that we are still awaiting the re-arrangement of the Crystal Palace clash and with that game in hand victory on Sunday evening, tallied with three points from the Eagles from the Eagles puts us level pegging.
If Arsenal are struggling right now when they did hold a nine point gap, no gap at all is going to become a massive cross for them to bear as their advantage looks to fully slip away.
Given the off pitch issues City have again been dealing with this term, news that Bernardo Silva will be departing at the end of the season will not come as a shock to anyone, and fans were largely expecting it given all of the speculation that has been swirling on the transfer window rumour mill for the last few years.
It does, however, mean that with the 31 year old, 107 capped Portuguese international midfielder, now deciding to head for pastures new and a fresh adventure before he considers retirement and hanging up his boots, you can bet your bottom dollar that with six top flight titles to his name from his lengthy spell in Manchester, he will be determined to go out on a high and add Number Seven to his personal winners medals collection and pair it up with the League Cup success we tasted only a few weeks back.
451 appearances so far with 76 goals and 77 assists returning 15 major honours – including the Treble – is a fantastic return and our current skipper will long be remembered as a club legend, and forever welcomed back to his adopted home.
“…It wasn’t that bad.”
In typical Silva style, that comment alone says everything.
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