Haaland's brutal efficiency ends Pep's need for tinkering

Closing in on their fifth Premier League title in six years, Manchester City's domestic dominance continues to grow, and as the Sky Blues again turn their attentions to Europe, there's a deepening feeling that this will finally be their year.

Pep Guardiola’s side are three wins away from retaining their Premier League crown, while there’s also an FA Cup final against local rivals Manchester United to look forward to.

But as had been the case in recent years, it’s the Champions League that represents City’s biggest test as Guardiola and his side continue to chase their white whale of European glory.

City as a club have a complicated relationship with the Champions League, with the club’s supporters in particular viewing the competition through a love/hate lense.

A hefty €60m Financial Fair Play fine from UEFA in 2014 was the start of the ill-feeling from the City fans, who by 2016 were regularly booing the competition anthem, so much so that UEFA threatened to sanction the club for doing so, but eventually backed away from that threat.

Huge swathes of empty seats at the Etihad, particularly during group stage games, spoke to a wider disconnect between supporters and the Champions League, while poorly implemented stadium bans for City away games against both CSKA Moscow and Dynamo Kiev led to further ill-feeling.

A second Financial Fair Play investigation in 2019 was eventually dropped but by then the damage had been done and with the club’s relatively poor record in the competition until that point, fans were willing to shrug off their team’s European disappointments.

This season however, there’s a sense of growing inevitability about the club’s European quest and while the booing of the anthem hasn’t stopped, there's less