The Title Race - 2024/25

How many points to win the league?

  • Total voters
    301
  • Poll closed .
Martin Samuel.

Manchester City look to be nearing the end of their period of dominance. If Guardiola does not leave at the end of this season, in all likelihood he will be gone at the end of 2025-26. Either way, it is hard to imagine City towering over their competitors when that happens.

Guardiola may be right that City will handle succession issues better than Manchester United or Arsenal, but they were never as dominant before he arrived. They won titles, sure, but as singles not quadruples. So there may be a vacancy at the top and as many as ten teams capable of contesting it.
 
HelloCity said:
There’s a bigger prize to win this season and it doesn’t involve the PL title or CL.

It involves our existence & future.
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If we win this case the bounce back of that will be massive and also he drop off will . Anyone heard anything of how it’s going ?
 
youngbob said:
I don't understand all the doom and gloom and "woe is me" pessimism. It's not the only reason, but this is part of why some opposition fans are turning against us. If fans of other clubs came and read this forum sometimes they'd get the impression that none of us know we're born. A "royal fuck up" is relegation, a "fuck up" would be missing out on European football.

This is just an off season. So far.

It is literally impossible for every team to win the title every single season. Does that mean that only one team can be judged to have got it right? Does that mean literally every other team dropped the ball or made some royal fuck up or a massive mistake? Are the efforts of everyone else in the league literally for nothing if one team wins?

If we don't win the title this year, it will be consistent with literally all of English football history. No team in this country has ever won five league titles on the bounce. No team had ever won four in a row until this very same City squad achieved record-breaking history six months ago. Do none of us understand the times we're living through?

Heck, before 2019 no team had won back-to-back English titles for 10 years. We sorted that record out. Before 2023, no team had won three consecutive titles for 14 years. We sorted that out as well. No English team had done the continental treble in the 21st century, but we took care of that too. We are watching an immortal team.

We all thought last year would be one step too far. Physically, mentally, emotionally. But the lads dusted themselves off and won the league with one of the highest points totals in Premier League history, setting an outstanding record in the process. In that time, we've fought off competition from Liverpool and Arsenal who are two of the best runners-ups the English league system has ever seen.

City can't win the league every year. Legs get weary, players get older, other teams get better, fresh new formations become tired old formations. This has literally been the case for every team that's ever won a First Division or Premier League title. Pep managing four consecutive titles is fucking outrageous and literally unprecedented.

Lots of people on this forum are old enough to remember City winning the First Division title in 1968 and then plummeting to 13th the following season. We're definitely all old enough to remember the 12/13 season, or the run between August 2014 and April 2018 when we went almost four calendar years without winning the title at all.

I'm sure most of us are old enough to remember the period between August 2003 and May 2007 when United went three seasons without the Premier League title and only won the FA Cup in 2004 because they were lucky enough to play second-tier Milwall in the final. Does anyone at United focus on that period now? Of course they don't.

In 15 years when Pep's gone, Kevin's gone, Txiki's gone, and maybe even Khaldoon's gone, are we going to look back and moan about the 24/25 season when we finished 2nd behind Arne Slot's Liverpool and only reached the latter stages of the FA Cup and Champions League? Are we buggery - we're going to focus on everything else.

Because that's what football's about - collecting special moments so you can have a little nostalgic cry about them in 20 years and tell your grandkids about the players you were lucky enough to watch. Does anyone on here moan about losing the 1977 title race to Liverpool? No. But do they all remember Mick Channon, Gary Owen, and Peter Barnes? Abso-fucking-lutely.

Teams are allowed a season off. Once you reach the top there's only one way it's possible to go. It's happened to literally every team to ever sit at the pinnacle of the English game. The old rule under Pep was that we'd have a season off, two seasons on, a season off, two season on, etc. Then we won the bloody treble during a season that was supposed to be an "off" one. And then won another title.

An off-season was coming. It might be this one, it might not be. But for you to sit there and call this a "royal fuck up" is just barking mad, sorry. I understand humans never really appreciate the good times while they're happening but we're looking at a season where "underperformance" means 3rd place, European football, and a Community Shield.

This isn't meant to be a lecture saying "Remember how shit we used to be". I'm not even saying we couldn't have planned this season a little better. But what I am saying is that it's impossible to plan and approach every season completely perfectly, and that it's better to just take in what we are achieving. How that night Istanbul didn't change our entire fanbase's outlook is a mystery to me.
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I’m sorry but going into a season with a squad that had one def mid and one striker is a royal fuck up in my book.

If only we had been given a warning last season about how this team malfunctions without Rodri ( like losing every game he didn’t play in ).

Don’t be kidded by our league position. Focus on the results and performances post Rodri injury which have been a mess.

There will be a lot more flapping over the next few weeks when we start playing the better teams in the league.
 
Prophet of Doom said:
I’m sorry but going into a season with a squad that had one def mid and one striker is a royal fuck up in my book.

If only we had been given a warning last season about how this team malfunctions without Rodri ( like losing every game he didn’t play in ).

Don’t be kidded by our league position. Focus on the results and performances post Rodri injury which have been a mess.

There will be a lot more flapping over the next few weeks when we start playing the better teams in the league.
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You ignored literally everything I said there.
 
Another worrying factor is that bar Haaland, no one else is scoring goals for us bar our left back.

Whereas the Dippers have Salah, Jota, Diaz and Gakpo who will easily get into double figures, and Nunez could too if he learns how to shoot.
Then there's Chiesa who will probably come in and contribute something if he ever gets fit.

Liverpool always scored goals under Klopp but the one thing that saved us on occasions, for me, was that they were sloppy at the back and gave up a lot of chances, and the midfield was never that good.
They seem to have tightened up a bit in defence.

I hate to be the voice of doom, but I just think that they could win it by default/process of elimination this year.
For us, a combination of injuries, a poor transfer window in hindsight leaving us with 1 striker and 1 DM, and simply tiredness could see us unable to go on one of those winning runs that takes us to the title this season.
 
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