Simply the best? Manchester City have hit greatness without friction

R eal Madrid are European champions, yet in that first half at the Etihad on Wednesday, they were outclassed to an almost incomprehensible degree. Every Manchester City outfielder bar Rúben Dias had a shot; Madrid managed one in total. So discombobulating was the ferocity of City’s press that Madrid completed only 13 passes in the first 15 minutes. It was 2-0 at half-time and could have been five. City played with such pace and precision – against a European grandee – that the only appropriate response was awe.

Yet in mid-January, as City lost to Manchester United at Old Trafford, it seemed reasonable to suggest that this was not one of Pep Guardiola’s better sides, that with United rising City could no longer take supremacy for granted in Manchester. Four months on, with only United and Internazionale standing between City and the second treble in English football history – the 10th anywhere in Europe – such prognostications look a little silly.

But they were valid at the time. City had just dropped points at home to Frank Lampard’s Everton. They had gone out of the Carabao Cup to a Southampton side managed by Nathan Jones, Quadruple Denier. The following Thursday, City found themselves 2-0 down to Tottenham at half-time, before coming back to win 4-2. For all their firepower, there was an unfamiliar defensive vulnerability to them. That second-half comeback meant that, at the halfway stage of the season, City had 42 points, having scored 50 and conceded 20, on course for their third-best goals scored tally under Guardiola but their second-worst points total and their poorest goals against record.

The reason was not hard to identify. Guardiola, determined to counter the counter, has always prioritised control but