Manchester City appear unbeatable with Erling Haaland in total control

H istory is what happens when you’re busy making plans about how to stop Erling Haaland. After nine months of fractured storylines, the European club season is finally narrowing to a point. For all the broken notes, the time-jumps, the jetlag along the way, we could now be facing an endgame of rare clarity, a moment where the entire horizon turns a shade of sky blue.

Manchester City may still end up with nothing this season, no pots to wave, no bobbing podium huddles. But they are also within a sustained final push of winning it all, of taking that almost-unprecedented treble of Champions League, FA Cup and Premier League.

This thing feels close now. With the second leg of the Champions League quarter-final against Bayern Munich downgraded to the status of useful aerobic workout, City have a maximum of 14 live games left to play, nine in the Premier League, two in the FA Cup and three in the Champions League. This thing is starting to look, not only possible, but probable.

We have of course been here before. As recently as last spring – and this was not, repeat not, a three-month peyote trance – Liverpool came within two match-days of completing the quadruple, and thereby racking up the greatest season in the history of English club football.

The difference this time around is that City have elevated their game to a rare pitch at just the right moment, a team running through these high-stakes collisions with a kind of light around it, just as everyone else starts to burn and grimace and tie up. The evisceration of Bayern Munich on Tuesday night makes it nine wins in a row, with a combined aggregate score of 34-4.

It also helps that the run-in, while tough in parts, is also quite accommodating. All of the teams City