Mocking Ronaldo, proving coaches wrong, holding players back - Inside Man City academy's historic season

Manchester City are not only Champions of Europe and Champions of England, but they are creating a dynasty at academy level, too.

For the last three years, City have secured the Premier League, Premier League 2 and Under-18 Premier League in the same season, with that under-18 title sticking at the City Football Academy for four years running.

With a record like that, you would expect the confidence to be flowing through the academy buildings last summer, a humble expectation that City's talented youth teams would be challenging for the titles again - because that's what this club does.

Not quite.

ALSO READ: Man City remember their roots as Champions League adds to global pull

"Yeah, that won't happen," was the response from under-21 head coach Brian Barry-Murphy when asked if they could win the PL2 again at the start of the campaign.

Barry-Murphy's expectation was reasonable, too. City had sold key players like Romeo Lavia, Juan Larios, Sam Edozie (all to Southampton), while Cole Palmer permanently stepped up to the first team, and the likes of James McAtee and Liam Delap were sent out on loan. They may have planned for Rico Lewis to play a role for the under-21s, but he quickly impressed Pep Guardiola and was fast-tracked up a level after only a handful of appearances with the Elite Development Squad.

To replace them, City promoted a number of under-18 players, so if they were going to retain both of their titles, they would have to do it with almost completely new squads.

So how did the academy go from expecting a transitional season to defending their titles yet again? MEN Sport went inside the dressing room to speak to the coaches and players who helped make history again.

A simple answer would be to point at