Pep Guardiola's Man City have NORMALISED the abnormal, writes IAN LADYMAN... It's only thanks to Arsenal this season wasn't a dull procession like in Spain, Italy and Germany

The consolation for Arsenal comes in knowing they are not the only ones to tread this long road. They are not the only team to have reached the finish line on the back of many weeks of consistent excellence only to find Manchester City waiting for them.

Liverpool suffered this way on two occasions. In 2019 Jurgen Klopp’s team accumulated 97 points, lost just one Premier League game all season and did not win the title, City claiming it by one point. Then, three years later, it happened again. Liverpool finished with 92 points, losing only twice, and did not win the title, City one point ahead again.

So, yes, if things go the way we expect them to go in Manchester and North London on Sunday afternoon, Arsenal will know how it feels. They will understand how it hurts to finish the season in almost perfect fashion, only to find it is not quite good enough.

The strange thing is that the rest of us have grown so accustomed to what Pep Guardiola’s City team do that we have accepted it as normal, but it isn’t. City have normalised the abnormal and sometimes it is extraordinary to consider. If they beat Everton at the Emirates this afternoon, Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal team will have finished their league season with 16 wins from 18 games. City, however, need only to beat a West Ham team with nothing to fight for to close out their season with nine victories. Last season they saw Arsenal off by winning 12 on the bounce when it mattered.

‘Yes I understand it,’ said Guardiola. ‘The margins have been so tight. Hats off to Liverpool and Arsenal. If you get to the last game like this it means you have been magnificent, even if the gap the next day between first and second always seems huge.’

At some point, City will have to slow down. A theory that exists in Premier League circles is that when Guardiola eventually leaves City, football director Txiki Begiristain and the third Catalan wheel, chief executive Ferran Soriano, will leave with him. If that happens, the reset facing this season’s champions-elect will be significant.

But that is straw clutching. The bald truth is that City are on the cusp on winning a fourth title in a row, something that has never been done before. Guardiola’s work at his third club has been impressive in scale and in method. At the moment there is no sign of a dropping of the pace. So as Klopp prepares to leave Liverpool, we should be thankful for Arsenal. Without them, City’s dominance would surely continue almost without challenge.

There are those who have called this season’s title race boring. There are those who are tired and resentful of City’s enduring superiority, particularly given that they still have 115 unresolved Premier League charges hanging over them relating to alleged financial doping.

It has not been a dull title race, however. Until Liverpool ran out of gas a month ago, this was a contest with three teams in it. In Germany, the margin between first and second is 15 points. In Italy it is 18, in Spain 14 and in France it is nine.

But when Tottenham’s Son Heung-min ran through late in Tuesday’s defeat to City, his team were only a goal down. Had he not been denied by keeper Stefan Ortega, Arsenal would have one hand on the trophy on Sunday morning.

Arteta, not usually an emotional talker, admitted on Friday that Son’s big moment had triggered a response as he watched at home.

‘My kids were running around the table and going like this,’ he said, putting his head in his hands. ‘Yes I was the same.

‘If I had to pick a player in the Premier League for that moment, it probably would be him. Michael Jordan explained it many times, how many times he had the winning shot. It was always him. Sometimes he did not manage to do it. This is the beauty of sport, as well. What can you do?’

So yes, we owe Arsenal a debt of thanks for providing this season’s challenge and they should now get better. The change that is upon Liverpool may yet be traumatic. At Manchester United, only muddles remain while Chelsea and Tottenham could easily travel north or south next season.

Arteta, though, has a young team that looks primed to achieve in the future. The 10 outfield players expected to face Everton on Sunday have an average age of just over 25 and it is a group that should be further strengthened by the recruitment of a striker.

‘My first thought is always to improve these players,’ said Arteta. ‘There are players who have improved. Do they have another level? There are others who have not improved, so what am I doing wrong? What can we do better? Then we look to the academy first. Is there something there that can really help us? Hopefully yes and if not, then you will have to recruit it.

‘Believe me, any player wants to come to Arsenal. Every time I pick up the phone they want to come. It’s not because it is me, it is because it is Arsenal and what is happening here.’

City remain the standard bearers and one of Guardiola’s great strengths over the years has been to continue to motivate a squad that has already won everything. Some of last season’s Treble winners — such as Phil Foden and Jack Grealish — admitted to post-Treble lethargy earlier in the campaign and that was a period that saw City slip below their impeccably high standards.

If there were signs of vulnerability at the Etihad then they all appeared before Christmas. There were back-to-back defeats to Wolves and Arsenal, a strange 4-4 draw at Chelsea followed by a 1-1 draw at home to Liverpool and then a defeat at Aston Villa that ranked as one of the most impotent performances of Guardiola’s reign.

Maybe that was the time for Arsenal to put distance between themselves and their rivals. Maybe that is where this year’s title was essentially won and lost. The truth is, though, that Arsenal have mirrored City in not really hitting their straps until Christmas and the New Year had passed.

At City, they know the truth of it. They know they are not a popular club outside of their own walls. They know an eyebrow will remain raised until their legal dispute with the league whose trophy they have come to own is settled one way or the other.

On Friday, Guardiola was asked about it outright by the BBC. Do people like City, Pep?

‘F***!’ Guardiola said with a smile of mock exasperation. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know what the people think. I don’t knock on everybody’s door and ask.

‘But if I ask all the Premier League teams if they would like to be in our position they would. Our destiny is in our hands.’

West Ham have not taken as much as a point from a game at the Etihad for almost nine years. Their manager David Moyes is leaving. His team cannot improve its league position; they will finish ninth regardless. City and their manager have travelled this road before. Against QPR in 2012 it was desperately tight. Against Aston Villa two years ago it was squeaky. Nevertheless it seems impossible the Hammers will take City to such extremes on Sunday.

‘I think it will be like the Aston Villa game,’ said Guardiola. ‘I would like to be 3-0 up after 10 minutes, but it won’t happen. What happened against Villa and against QPR with the Sergio Aguero moment will be here again. Villa didn’t have anything to play for and look what happened. The supporters have to come and be ready to be with us. If we don’t win, Arsenal will be champions for sure.’

It seems unlikely that Arsenal will be champions. Deep down Arteta will know this, but it hasn’t stopped him dreaming. He was on the City bench as Guardiola’s assistant when City won at Brighton to eclipse Liverpool on the final day in 2019. ‘I just felt privileged,’ he said. ‘The unpredictablity is like a drug.’

Six months later he was gone, arriving at Arsenal to make good the deficiencies that had set in. He has done it. He has brought the Gunners to the table and they should remain there. For now, however, they await opportunity. 

Back in 2012, as City fought desperately to overcome QPR and win their first Premier League title, James Milner sat on the bench and saw a helicopter overhead.

‘That’s taking the trophy to United,’ he said, aware that they were winning at Sunderland.

He was wrong and in any case he need not have worried. The trophy ended up in City blue that day and nobody really believes it will be any different on Sunday.

But if we have seen the last of Arsenal stretching for the line, it will be a surprise.