What do you get when you combine the best player in the Premier League with the best manager in the Premier League? Trouble for the rest of the Premier League.
Manchester City are already threatening to end another title race before it had really got going with their unrivalled commitment to excellence. Pep Guardiola and his squad have raised their performance levels over the last six weeks at the same time as Chelsea and Liverpool have stumbled, resulting in a double-digit lead at the top of the table that has brought more soul-searching about how competitive the league really is.
The good news for other clubs is that City cannot always be this good. They are where they are through years of making terrific decisions, spending a lot of money but using it more wisely than most others; ask anyone who moans about City having the most valuable squad why the club faced no English competition for Kevin De Bruyne, or Bernardo Silva, or countless others.
Guardiola makes pretty much every player better and has fostered a ferocious mentality within the squad to maintain their quality and commitment to winning trophies as well as constantly coming up with ways to beat different opponents every week. When he leaves - and his contract is up at the end of next season - that will be almost impossible to sustain because no replacement will be able to match the unique talents of Guardiola.
The bad news for other clubs is that the manager and his employers are doing as much as possible to cover for that eventuality, which brings us to the Chelsea game at the weekend.
A match containing plenty of quality was won thanks to the individual brilliance of De Bruyne. The Belgian has had more struggles than most this season and has only started half of their league matches this season, but has been showing lately why he was voted as the best player in the league for the last two seasons.
Guardiola accepted this after the match, yet also stated his desire to improve the 30-year-old and get more out of him.
To be clear, this is a footballer who the manager wanted when he was in charge of Bayern Munich and suggested not long after arriving at the Etihad that only Lionel Messi was in a category above him. Since then, he has played major roles in two league title wins (he was injured for most of the 2018/19 campaign) and equalled the competition record for assists.
It says plenty about De Bruyne that coaches still think there is room for improvement after so many years in the game. There was a time this season when City appeared to be better without him as he struggled for rhythm, but his dedication on the training pitch impressed staff and teammates alike and has yielded a spectacular return to form.
And it says more about Guardiola that he is trying to get more out of him. That is, as he pointed out, the job of a manager but it takes a certain kind of perfectionist to watch De Bruyne play in such good form and challenge him to deliver even more.
Guardiola has often said he will leave when the players are not longer listening to his instructions, yet the messages are still being heard loud and clear from even the most senior members of the squad.
That is the mentality driving City past their rivals, and as long as it is in place it is going to be fiendishly difficult for them to feel like the Blues can be toppled in the league.
