Almost all the great clubs are worse: That’s been a running theme in European soccer for the 2022-23 season.
Chelsea have gotten worse with every transfer purchase it made. Liverpool chased shiny scoring objects, forgot about its stale midfield and paid the price. Bayern Munich lost forward Robert Lewandowski, replaced him with a 17-year old and yet another winger, and panic-fired an expensive manager during the season’s stretch run.
Paris Saint-Germain signed young, new players with one vision (Vitinha and Nuno Mendes), paired them with an expensive attacking front that has a different vision and hired a manager (Christophe Galtier) who has yet another different vision. Tottenham Hotspur hired someone (Cristian Stellini) who is the opposite of the ex-manager (Antonio Conte) for basically the fourth straight time, and it’s catching up to them (while they potentially prepare to do it for a fifth time).
This flirtation with parity has had intriguing effects. Arsenal has led the Premier League for much of the season. Napoli are on their way to a first Scudetto in 33 years. Bayern cannot shake Borussia Dortmund in the Bundesliga race no matter how many times BVB flubs chances to take charge at the top. AC Milan and Inter Milan are both in the Champions League semifinals despite each battling poor runs of form in Serie A this year.
For a while, Manchester City were kind enough to join this group with their own version of confusing listlessness. City boasted the most celebrated manager in the game in Pep Guardiola and what was, on paper, the best team in Europe last season. Then they added master goal scorer Erling Haaland and soon-to-be World Cup hero Julian Alvarez (not to mention beloved Leeds defensive midfielder Kalvin Phillips and Borussia Dortmund defender Manuel Akanji) to the squad. It seemed almost unfair, and Haaland has indeed been a high-volume scorer from his very first Premier League start.
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Still, the whole kept falling short of the sum of the parts, to the extent that some pundits thought Haaland was hurting City’s typical flow. (Imagine that!) After averaging 2.44 points per game last season in the Premier League, City averaged only 2.29 before the World Cup break and were soon five points behind a torrid Arsenal. Then they averaged only 1.86 in their first seven league matches after the break.
Every breakthrough was paired with a setback. They beat Chelsea, but lost to Manchester United. They beat Liverpool in a huge EFL Cup match, but bowed out of the competition to lowly Southampton. They beat Spurs, and then lost to Spurs two weeks later. They beat Arsenal 3-1 in a huge league affair, only to draw with lowly Nottingham Forest three days later. And they began the Champions League knockout stages — where they have been the betting favorites all season — with a frustrating 1-1 draw at RB Leipzig as well.
Haaland was scoring less consistently too, with a three-match goalless stretch in January and a one-in-six stretch in February. The Was City better without Haaland? takes and questions began to percolate. Only a wobbly stretch from Arsenal (three February matches, one point) was keeping Man City from a big hole in the league race; and heading into the second leg of the Champions League round of 16, City was suddenly the vice-favorite to Bayern, per FiveThirtyEight’s SPI ratings.
Things weren’t completely falling apart, by any means, but the edge that we assumed City would have by this point in the season just wasn’t appearing.
Then, it appeared.
