Manchester City broke the record for most consecutive wins, across all competitions, by an English club when they notched their 15th straight win, with a FA Cup victory over Swansea City on Feb. 10. In demolishing Tottenham Hotspur over the weekend, they ran their streak to 16, and who knows how many Ws they’ll stack up before the run finally ends.
Manager Pep Guardiola has accomplished this winning streak despite missing his best player, Kevin De Bruyne, for much of it. Pep has even had to make do without his best player in all three position groups (De Bruyne in midfield, Sergio Aguero in attack and Ruben Dias in the back line), but City still keeps on winning.
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At this point, they’re Premier League champions-elect, as Manchester United are the side that’s closest to them, and as you saw yesterday, they won’t be title contenders until they vastly improve their central defense.
Guardiola hailed the strength, talent and depth of his side, as he pointed out their prodigious run being accomplished in spite of having no superstar. And in making in these remarks, he name-dropped a few galacticos, which of course re-ignited Lionel Messi transfer talk.
“We don’t have players who can win the game by himself – we don’t have a Messi, a Cristiano, Mbappe or Neymar,” Guardiola said.
“We have to do it as a team.”
Probed to expound on that commentary, the Spaniard said:
“I’ll be honest, I would love to have a player who scores every single game four goals and runs like these players run, I would love it. I wouldn’t change any player that we have right now today, in this season. All of them. That’s why many times I praised our captain Fernandinho, like how he helps on and off the pitch to stick together in the bad moments.
“The big teams, the big players show it in the bad moments, in the good moments everyone is easy to play, and we had the bad moments this season.
“We had a moment when we were in 12th position in the table, we were five points away from Tottenham [and eight after the loss] who were top of the league when we lost there and now we are 17 points ahead of them. So that means consistency, how we turned over this situation, and that means a lot.
“Maybe that won’t be enough to win the title, but what we enjoyed the last two months belongs to us.”
Obviously, mentioning Messi reignites the transfer rumors relating to the Barcelona forward, although to be fair, it’s a narrative that’s never truly gone away. It’s clear that City don’t need Messi, as once again we have talk of a quadruple this season, but imagine just how dominant they would be next season with him?
Doesn’t seem fair does it? Well, if you believe so, then take that up with FIFA and UEFA.
Paul M. Banks runs The Sports Bank, partnered with News Now. Banks, the author of “No, I Can’t Get You Free Tickets: Lessons Learned From a Life in the Sports Media Industry,” has regularly appeared in WGN, Sports Illustrated, Chicago Tribune and SB Nation. Follow him on Twitter and Instagram.