Man City can smell blood in the Arsenal water and Pep is intoxicated | OneFootball

If the 24/25 season had an overriding theme it was the ending of trophy droughts.

Crystal Palace won the first major silverware in their history. Newcastle won their first trophy that wasn’t in, well, black and white and even Tottenham ended the most discussed trophy drought of all, in the most Tottenham way imaginable and have since sacked or moved on almost everyone involved in such a hideously off-brand endeavour.

But there was another story rumbling along in the background of all this drought-ending catharsis and joy. And it might have been, in its own roundabout way, just as necessary.

For while all those droughts were ending, something almost as unthinkable was happening in Manchester: Guardiola and City won absolutely nothing, unless you count the Community Shield which you absolutely should not. That is just not how things are supposed to be these days.

It was City and Guardiola’s first trophyless season since his very first in England back in 20216/17. And it really might have been just what City needed.

It’s not that there was massive complacency. Certainly older City supporters need no reminding that what they’ve experienced over the last decade is not normal, not Typical City.

But for younger fans it was a more unusual experience; even in the years before Pep turned City into English football’s dominant force, there was still success on a scale most clubs never experience ever in their history.

Between 2010/11 and 2014/15, City won two league titles and finished second twice as well as an FA Cup and League Cup. And that was the time before the gold rush.

Since Guardiola’s arrival, City have won six more league titles, a Champions League, four Carabaos, a couple of FA Cups, a UEFA Super Cup and a Club World Cup.

It is a lot of stuff. Even the most well-adjusted fanbase is going to get a bit blasé about it. How could you not? It’s inevitable.

But a year of going without – especially one like 24/25 where City didn’t even really mount any kind of meaningful challenge for the two top honours – can have a reinvigorating effect.

It certainly seems to have done so for Guardiola himself, who last season often appeared to have grown entirely weary of the whole thing. There were long spells where it wouldn’t have surprised us at all to hear he’d decided to leave in the summer a la Klopp. We’re certain he contemplated it.

But now he’s got the scent in his nostrils again. He’s got a new-look team. It’s not quite as precise and efficient a machine as his very best City teams but in its way all the more charming for that.

Above all, he’s once again caught up in the thrill of the chase. Worth remembering that after back-to-back early-season defeats to Spurs and Brighton it felt entirely reasonable to wonder whether City, so dominant so recently, would once again have to settle for the role of mere spectator and occasional agitator in the title race.

They still don’t fully convince us. They still don’t quite have that look of champions about them. But that might be the most exciting thing of all; that for all the doubts, for all their flaws, for all the uncertainty, there they sit, right on the shoulders of Arsenal.

Both these teams have been here before. Both know how that played out.

City and their trophy-hoarding manager can smell blood in the water and are suddenly right up for this.

Sometimes it really can be the ground left fallow for a year that proves the most fertile.