This team won't be considered great until...

ChicagoBlue said:
...hell freezes over.

Such things are “decided” by media types, most of whom will,never be in City’s corner, because we just don’t have the media influence needed to get there. One only needs to look at the world of punditry and what passes for football journalism today to know that City will always be tagged with the new money/oil money/bought success label, and the context of the UEFA Club that was trying to keep us out, first with FFP, now with changing the seedlings for the CL, and who knows what is next, will all be lost to the ignorance of faint history.

Those of us who have been playing and watching football know we are watching and experiencing football of the highest quality ever seen on this shores. That is undeniable and the highlight reel of our goals this season will be hours and hours long, because not only will there be so many goals to see, but the build up play for some of the goals has been almost unbelievable.

We are witnessing a team walk away with the League, possibly beating the goals and points records, while playing football that was once the sole purview of the Continentals, and even then only those living in the rarefied air of places like Madrid or Barcelona.

That said, the historical yardsticks will always be placed in our path, even though eras of football are distinctly different and the likes of 20 PL titles may never be seen again because of the financial dominance of one club and one manager. Nobody will be able to take away the greatness of the Ferguson era, but that doesn’t not mean Manchester United will always be great, as evidenced by the last few years and their players, fans and sycophants hanging on to that Ferguson era history for dear life. In Liverpool we see the same thing. In a different era, they had some fantastic players and managers and managed to string together a few trophies of note, most notably 5 European Cups. However, for a club that has failed to win the League in the apremier League era, their pretensions to continued greatness are laughable. Leeds United were once great, too, and look at them!

Many fans of many clubs can remember a time when their team had. Modicum of success, but we seem to be dogged by two local teams that have achieved a history of success...just not for many years! In that time, City has built a club that can compete with anyone, has the best domestic record of any club in the Premier League for the last 7 seasons and is being touted as the best footballing team to ever play in these shores.

For me, today, right now, that is all I care about. I have lived through the history of United and Liverpool’s greatness in British football, but in the last few years, they have been pretensions at best. City are, by far, the best team in Britain for the past 7 years. They have won the most titles, been the best overall team, won multiple domestic cup trophies and have gone furthest in the Champions League in recent years. Regardless, a biased football press will have an excuse for it all and the players that have achieved it (and the fans that have enjoyed it) should not care in the slightest. I know what I have witnessed and the truth of the statistics do not lie...City are the best team in Britain in the modern era of the 2010s.
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That’s a brilliant post.
 
City fans are quite entitled to call this year’s team a great City team, best we ever had.

If we can repeat the same level of performance next year and add a CL, we can expect everyone to acknowledge that this s a great team. Or say why not. We will maybe need a couple of tweaks in the summer to do this, to give better defensive midfield cover and help convert possession into chances/goals.

I think Pep and the owners have a different agenda, to make Man City a great club. That will take a bit longer.
 
johnnytapia said:
No, we should allow all the 2nd, 3rd and 4th place teams in. Then let teams lose games and still continue. We should also seed it so the strongest teams never get to be drawn against each other until the last 16. Much more difficult than only playing champions and having a straightforward draw and lose and your out.
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And this is the unacceptable aspect of it considering the way Uefa would operate a seeding system. I can envisage a situation where a well-known but much unloved PL team didn't make the top four but their historical connection would ensure them entry. And just what would Uefa make of the English word 'strongest'? That would be morphed into something which included some element of past escapades, successful or not.
 
We'll be considered great around 2040. Half the world don't care about the facts, they just remember football the best from their teenage years. Nostalgia amplifies things, hence why people now still insist the Invincibles were better than us despite every single statistic saying otherwise.

Having said that, I think it's important that we become the first team in almost a decade to retain the title next season, and win the Champions League in the next three years. If we can do both of those things, we'll be considered on the level of Barca and Real by the time Pep leaves.
 
Well, I don't know if my ears have been playing tricks on me, but I've heard several ‘pundits’on MOTD and elsewhere say this season that this is the best team that the PL has ever seen. And to be frank, it has made me a bit uneasy, while still being gratifying for the obvious reason. We are playing utterly superb football this season, but until we've won the title, then won it back to back and preferably added the CL(and playing stylish football while doing so), I don't know that I'd consider us a great team. Even then, it's not just a question of silverware, although the two have a strong tendency to go hand in hand. Of course, it all depends what you understand by ‘great’. For me, it's not just being a very good footballing team (which we unquestionably are) but introducing new possibilities into the way the game is played, and having a lasting influence on the way that game is played in your own country, and possibly beyond. We may get to that with Pep, but I honestly don't think we're there, or close to it.
By that measure, then, I've only seen a very few teams in my lifetime that I'd consider as great with no reservations, and I'm not at all sure that any of them come from this country. I'm clear in my mind that the Brazil team of 1970 measures up. But these things are obviously subjective.
 
The only way we will be consider the greatest team ever by the rag loving media is the following. We have to win back to back the following trophies 1st the premier league, 2nd the league cup, 3rd the fa cup, 4th the champions league, 5th the European super cup, and finally the world club championship. All in the same season.
Then just maybe the media will consider us the greatest team of all time.
 
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