Despite prematurely declaring Arsenal champions in January, the football community now broadly anticipates Manchester City will claim the Premier League title this season.
This sentiment is, of course, quite understandable. There exists a peculiar eagerness to predict such outcomes months in advance, assuming that future events will precisely mirror recent results. This is reinforced by recent history: Arsenal’s repeated squandering of top-of-the-table advantages, coupled with City’s renowned propensity for initiating winning streaks.
Consequently, City’s hard-earned 2-1 triumph over Newcastle United felt like a pivotal evening in the title race, especially ahead of Sunday’s north London derby, given Arsenal’s recent inconsistencies and the momentum City has cultivated since their dramatic victory at Anfield three weeks ago.
Pep Guardiola, however, expresses reservations. “I promise you, I’m honest with you, many things are going to happen!” he declared after the match. “I have the feeling we are not going to win all the games, I don’t know about Arsenal. I have the feeling we are not going to win all the games, this is my feeling.”
It is natural for observers to expect City to embark on a run, as this is their established pattern. Even in the previous season, when their performance suffered significantly during the winter months, they managed to regroup sufficiently to comfortably secure a top-four position and reach the FA Cup final.
In each of the preceding four seasons, they achieved title victories through sustained winning runs. During 2023 and 2024, they overtook Arsenal thanks to streaks of wins in the spring. The year before that, they edged out Liverpool in a title race that went down to the final day. And the season before that, they recorded an astonishing 24 consecutive wins across all competitions.
To belabor the point, in 2019, they triumphed in all of their final 14 league fixtures to narrowly defeat Liverpool, again on the season’s last day. The campaign prior, they had set a new Premier League record by winning 18 games in a row. While that particular streak occurred in the initial part of the season, it’s clear that, regardless of when it happens, City possesses the expertise to ‘go on a run’.
But does this City?
“When we have 60 or 70 per cent new players, we don’t have what we had in the past,” Guardiola noted less than a fortnight ago. “After the second or third season we had done it, we were able to do it, but now we have to prove it. I don’t know if we are able to win three, four, five, six games in a row. I don’t know. I don’t know.”
The prevailing narrative was slightly different then—City were still viewed as improbable challengers, and there was collective uncertainty about this new team’s resolve to go the distance. Now, owing to Arsenal’s wavering form and increasing indications that City are beginning to click, the assumption is that events will unfold precisely as they did in previous eras.
Speaking to TNT Sports after the Newcastle match, Guardiola revisited this theme when asked if he believes the squad is prepared for the title challenge. “Seventy per cent of the players never played in that situation and I don’t play so they have to live it.
“They know and we know that every game until the rest of the season will be like this, especially at home.”
The perception of both title contenders has dramatically shifted over a few weeks, yet City’s underlying reality remains unchanged—they are a new, young team in transition. This was evident even on Saturday, as they struggled to definitively beat Newcastle, a task they would historically accomplish by maintaining possession. Had they capitalized on their chances, the situation would have been much calmer, but this has been a recurring issue for them in second halves throughout 2026, making their problems in possession more troubling.
And it truly must be emphasized, whether one is doubting City or predicting another title, that this is indeed a very new team, where the players who expertly guided City through previous title challenges are now in the minority.
Ederson, Kyle Walker, Manuel Akanji, Ilkay Gundogan, Jack Grealish, and Kevin De Bruyne have all departed since the start of last year, signifying a rather substantial ‘brain drain’. City’s squad now features 11 senior players who have joined since January 2025, while Matheus Nunes has converted to right-back in that period, and Nico O’Reilly has progressed from the academy as a left-back (and is currently excelling in a more natural midfield role).
There are 10 players in the squad who have previously won major trophies with City, and four of them are part of the captaincy group: Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias, and Erling Haaland were handpicked by Guardiola as captains last summer, indicating a change in strategy given the manager had always previously left it to a player vote.
Phil Foden, Josko Gvardiol, Rico Lewis, Nathan Ake, John Stones, and Mateo Kovacic comprise the remainder, though their impact this season varies significantly—Kovacic, for instance, has not played at all, Stones has been plagued by injury setbacks, and Lewis and Ake are primarily fulfilling back-up roles.
Thus, it is both a very new and notably young squad. During the challenging period of last season, Guardiola commented on City being “an old team,” citing De Bruyne, Gundogan, and Kovacic. Within a month, he had deployed a much more revitalized side; the team that lost 2-0 to Liverpool last February was, at that point, Guardiola’s joint-youngest starting XI, averaging 25 years and 68 days.
He reverted to more experienced players during the run-in as City prioritized sterile control to cross the finish line, but that was a temporary measure. Following a summer rebuild, City fielded an even younger starting XI in the away defeat at Brighton at the very beginning of this season, averaging 24 years and 326 days. Having incorporated slightly more experienced players in January—Antoine Semenyo is 26, Marc Guehi 25—the total squad’s average age now stands at 25 years old, making it the fourth youngest in the league.
Guardiola expects City will not win every game (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
“They have done really good things, I have that feeling for many many months,” Guardiola stated in the same press conference where he admitted uncertainty about the team’s ability to win multiple consecutive matches, “but (we are) not consistent enough to control many aspects to win the games.”
This, it appears, is the primary reason why he cannot be entirely confident that this squad possesses what it takes to emulate its predecessors. For Guardiola, the main specific footballing concern seems to be their struggle to perform effectively in second halves, which he attributes to issues with playing out from the back.
“We don’t have time to train, first, and because there are 70 per cent new players,” he explained, outlining the reasons.
Again, that was evident against Newcastle. Although City showed resilience to secure the result—with Gianluigi Donnarumma underlining his importance with another crucial save—it suggests that long winning streaks will be more difficult to achieve if they cannot keep opponents at bay through consistent passing.
On Friday, Guardiola still seemed uncertain about the extent of influence City’s proven winners could exert on their newer teammates.
“The experience maybe can help, but I don’t know, on the pitch, how the new ones are going to react,” he remarked on Friday.
Later, he returned to this point. “I’ve said many times, when you (win) Premier Leagues and Champions Leagues, you don’t win 5-0 every weekend. No, this is a fairytale, it’s fine, but all the people are like, ‘how good was Man City’? When Man City was good, we won a lot of games, 1-0, 0-1, playing rubbish, playing not good. But the personality was there, how we handled those moments, how we dealt with that, it comes from them, and that’s why we had success.”
With Arsenal setting the pace this season, it initially appeared that City would lack the time to gel quickly enough to secure another title this season, but the Gunners’ recent struggles have created an opening.
“Perfect game? No. Ideal game? No,” was Guardiola’s assessment of their victory over Newcastle. “But we were a team. A team we have to be.”
It is certainly possible that City will indeed win the title, and perhaps their inherent winning ‘DNA’ will activate, leading them to victory in most, if not all, of their remaining fixtures. Nevertheless, this is a significantly different side, and the season is likely to contain many more unexpected developments.