Man City's latest title triumph means more than ever - Pep Guardiola has achieved what Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsene Wenger and Jose Mourinho couldn't, writes OLIVER HOLT

What they saw was something that had been foretold. What they saw was a confirmation of a promise that had been made to them.

When Pep Guardiola took over as City manager in July 2016, people who knew his work at Barcelona and Bayern Munich, who understood that those teams’ successes were as much about him as Lionel Messi and Thomas Muller, predicted that Guardiola would change English football.

They predicted that he would be the last, and most powerful, piece in the jigsaw of excellence that City’s Abu Dhabi owners were putting together in the east of Manchester and that he would usher in a period of dominance that would rival any seen in our game.

Some laughed at that initially, when Guardiola failed to win a trophy in his first season. They said his methods would not translate to the rough and tumble of the Premier League. They said Guardiola would have to change. But those people stopped laughing a long time ago.

And when referee John Brooks blew the final whistle just before 6pm on Sunday evening, and the scoreboard showed a blue moon rising and a sea of supporters in blue shirts rushed on to the pitch and Guardiola turned to David Moyes and shook his hand and then embraced Phil Foden, it marked a moment of history.

Not just Premier League history. Not just the sort of history that broadcasters love, the sort of history that began in 1992. But a new departure for the English game in its rich 136-year history. This was another title, yes, but this one meant more.

Because when City won the title on Sunday, they became the first team ever to win England’s top flight four times in succession. Not the great Aston Villa sides of the 1890s, nor the Huddersfield Town team of the 1920s, nor the Arsenal team of the 1930s, nor the Manchester United team of the 1950s, torn apart by the tragedy of the Munich Air Disaster, nor the great Liverpool teams of the 1970s and 1980s, nor even the Manchester United side that straddled the turn of the century ever achieved that.

The victory put Guardiola out on his own, too. So much for him not being able to adapt to English football. Not George Ramsay, nor Herbert Chapman, nor Sir Matt Busby, nor Bill Shankly, nor Bob Paisley, nor Sir Alex Ferguson, nor Arsene Wenger, nor Jose Mourinho, nor any of the great patriarchs of our game ever managed four in a row.

There is, of course, a legitimate debate about whether this unprecedented dominance is good for our game and whether we are just at the start of a period where one team will rule the domestic game year after year after year, as Bayern Munich have done in Germany, until they were finally usurped by Bayer Leverkusen this season.

State ownership of our clubs heightens the unease about that dominance. And hand-in-hand with that debate, there will be other caveats to the dominance, too. Because there is a shadow hanging over these triumphs in the shape of the 115 charges levelled against City by the Premier League, alleging financial breaches that happened before Guardiola came to the club but which, if proven, will stain these triumphs.

City’s case may be heard this winter. A verdict may be reached some time next year. They may be exonerated of all the charges. And so, for now, it is enough just to enjoy Guardiola’s genius and the beauty of the football he has created and the breathtaking brilliance of a manager who is never, never sated and whose most precious gift may be his ability to keep a group of multi-milionaire players hungry for more, year after year after year.

City were the class of the field yet again this season. In previous seasons, it has often been Liverpool who have pressed them close. This season, it was Arsenal. But no one can keep pace with Guardiola and City in the title run-in and so it proved again this time.

Arsenal blinked once. They lost at home to Aston Villa on Sunday April 14. And that was enough. City won their last nine games on the spin and went into the game against West Ham knowing that a win would be enough. In the end, they finished two points clear of Mikel Arteta’s side.

They had a few edgy moments when West Ham reduced the arrears to 2-1 just before half time but then Rodri, the club’s talisman, stepped up at the critical moment just as he had done in the Champions League final against Inter Milan last season. He won the game with a sidefoot then and he won this game with a sidefoot, too.

And so a team that was once a byword for misfortune, a team that fell through the divisions, a team that was playing Port Vale and Stockport County, and sometimes losing to them, less than 30 years ago, is now in the midst of a period of winning that no other English club has ever matched.

In the light of something so momentous, the match was an afterthought. It was presumed a foregone conclusion and any prospect of West Ham mounting a defiant rearguard action vanished very, very quickly. Anybody hoping for some kind of incarnation of the Blitz spirit in the Premier League’s east enders was grievously disappointed.

It took all of 76 seconds for City to open the scoring. West Ham lost the ball deep in their own half, Kyle Walker collected it and charged across the face of the visitors’ box before playing it to Bernardo Silva. Bernardo found Foden and Foden stepped outside his man and smashed his shot high into the net, beyond the dive of Alphonse Areola.

It was evident early on that Areola was in for a busy afternoon. He saved superbly from Jeremy Doku’s deflected shot and saw Rodri’s toe-poke fly into the side-netting before Foden stroked home the second from Doku’s slide-rule cross after 19 minutes.

‘Are you watching, Arsenal?’ the City fans yelled. It was not the last time that chant was heard on Sunday afternoon.

City should have had three a couple of minutes later when a driven cross-field pass by Bernardo was turned back into the box by Ruben Dias. Haaland tried to force it over the line but he was put off by a defender’s failed attempt to clear it and fluffed his tap-in completely.

Areola produced a brilliant finger-tip save to push a curling shot from Kevin de Bruyne around the post, Josko Gvardiol, City’s new auxiliary striker, headed just wide at the near post. It was nearly 40 minutes before West Ham mustered an attempt on goal – Stefan Ortega pushed Mohammed Kudus’s shot to safety.

But then, three minutes before the interval, Kudus fabricated another attempt and this time it succeeded spectacularly. City failed to clear a West Ham corner and Kudus flicked it up into the air with his back to goal and then crashed a magnificent overhead kick past Ortega. On the touchline, Guardiola hurled his water bottle to the floor in disgust.

The atmosphere had changed at the start of the second half. The party feel had gone, replaced by nerves and the spectre of a West Ham equaliser. At the Emirates, Arsenal, who had been a goal down, had equalised. Was it going to be a dramatic afternoon after all?

Guardiola was feeling it, too. Perhaps more keenly than anyone. When De Bruyne overhit a pass to Haaland that would have put Haaland in on goal, Guardiola put his hands over his face, kept them there for a few second as if he were hiding his grief and then pulled them away in an extravagant gesture of frustration.

The nerves were dispelled soon afterwards. An hour had gone when De Bruyne played a pass into Bernardo, who had his back to goal in the area. Bernardo laid the ball deliberately and carefully into the path of Rodri and even though Areola got a hand to his side-footed shot, he could not stop it going over the line.

Guardiola punched the air time after time and then put his hands over his face again. This time, he looked as if might weep with the sheer relief of the goal as much as exultation. In the stands, the City fans leapt up and down with their backs to the pitch, doing the Poznan, knowing that the title was won and that their place in history was secure.