The record books show that Manchester City have made light work of the Premier League over the last three years, winning back-to-back-to-back titles and playing revolutionary football in the process.
They have won those titles without a striker for two years, and without a left-back in 2022/23, making the best out of their versatile squad where rivals have fallen away thanks to injuries in key positions.
Yet it's easy to forget a couple of things when looking back over the last three years. Firstly, it hasn't all been easy. They won the league on the final day of the 2021/22 season to stop another fine Liverpool challenge, while Arsenal looked destined to win the Premier League for months until falling away during the run-in last term. In 2021, they had to win the title without Sergio Aguero for the most part, introducing the rotating false nine strategy.
And it's also easy to cast aside the fact that City have struggled to get started in each of those campaigns, relying on a mid-season run of wins to catapult them above their nearest challenger. This year, they have everything they need to get quickly out of the blocks and start as they mean to go on.
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In 2021, City had no pre-season at all, having ended their 2019/20 campaign just a month earlier in Portugal in the rearranged Champions League knockout stages that were pushed back due to the Covid lockdowns. There were no friendlies to play, and City were given a week extra at the start of the season given their lack of preparations.
The less-than-ideal pre-season translated to just six wins from the first 13 games in the Premier League, sinking to as low as 14th, and sitting ninth after those 13 games. After that, they embarked on a 13-game winning run that was the bedrock of their title success.
That summer, though, came the postponed Euro 2020 tournament, with England and Spain reaching the last four, plus Belgium and Ukraine reaching the quarter-finals. When Pep Guardiola reconvened his players for pre-season, most had only finished their previous seasons just two weeks previously, and it was a disrupted squad for the three home friendlies against Preston, Barnsley and Blackpool - all played at the Academy Stadium.
The start to the 2021/22 season was slightly better than the year before, but there were still four draws or defeats in the opening 10 games as well as the Community Shield defeat to Leicester with many senior players missing. City were fifth until the fifth week of the season and weren't top of the table until 15 games in. The 12-game winning run between November and January got the season back on track, and they would win the title on the final day thanks to Ilkay Gundogan's heroics against Aston Villa.
Then, last summer, City were finally back on the plane to the USA for a first foreign pre-season tour since 2019. The camp in Houston was disrupted by the absence of four key players as Aymeric Laporte was injured, and John Stones, Phil Foden and Gundogan were not allowed in the US.
With Manu Akanji and Sergio Gomez not yet signed, and Ruben Dias ill for the first friendly, Nathan Ake was the only fit centre-back in the squad, starting alongside youngster Luke Mbete against Club America, with new midfielder Kalvin Phillips coming off the bench to play at the back.
All eyes were on Erling Haaland at the NRG Stadium, but he wouldn't even get changed into his training gear for the first friendly as his fitness was managed, and his debut in Green Bay was cut short after 14 minutes due to the mother of all thunderstorms in Wisconsin. Haaland had already scored, of course, and when the contest with Bayern Munich resumed around 90 minutes later, it was cut short to an 80-minute contest, and any momentum was completely lost for the rest of the game.
City remained in the top two for almost all of the season, but three sets of dropped points in the opening 10 games gave Arsenal a platform to build on, and the Blues wouldn't win more than three consecutive games until the 28th attempt when they went on a run of 12 wins in a row. With the World Cup impacting the flow of the season, Guardiola had rued the slow start and the missed opportunity in the States by having so many key players missing.
So if, as expected, City have a near-fully-fit squad when they begin pre-season in the coming days, that could give Guardiola a boost that has hampered him for three years running. City will have more games to play this season after winning the Champions League, and getting off to a good start in the Premier League will be crucial.
Only Kevin De Bruyne and his hamstring issue appear to be problematic this summer, and the lack of a senior summer tournament means Guardiola's men should be rested after taking a full month off. Yokohama, Atletico Madrid and Bayern await in Japan and South Korea, before the Community Shield against Arsenal.
Combine tough opposition with a full squad, all well-rested, and Guardiola will be heading into a new season in better shape than the last three title-winning years.
