Manchester United’s wildest dreams are being dashed by Pep Guardiola – Stuart Brennan

Was this lastly going to be Tottenham’s 12 months? Had Chelsea’s £217million outlay boosted them again to title favourites? Would Liverpool storm away once more?

Would Manchester United’s surge in kind see them make the most of a Covid-hit season to seize an unlikely high spot? Or might plucky Leicester assume the unthinkable for a second time in 5 years?

The pre-Christmas chitter-chatter about who might or would win the Premier League title was lacking one vital identify, it appears.

Manchester City, late to start out their marketing campaign after their Champions League involvement in August, have been just about ignored.

The Blues are like a nasty dream for the opposite title hopefuls, and their legions of pundits and prattlers.

They might not be ignored within the two title seasons, and the truth that they have been the one crew that had even a faint hope of catching Liverpool final season meant they remained within the consciousness.

However like every nightmare, as quickly as they may, the remainder of the league forgot about them.

Defeat by Tottenham had left them in eleventh place in November, once they have been dismissed as potential challengers.

No-one took discover of the very fact they nonetheless had a recreation in hand, or factored within the weirdness of a season through which optimistic Covid exams and the upset to routine attributable to the pandemic, would produce odd outcomes and patchy kind.

And when the Blues performed out a dismal goalless draw at Previous Trafford after which a couple of days later have been held on the Etihad by West Brom, it merely underlined the wishful pondering that Guardiola’s crew have been a spent pressure.

It was insanity, in fact, however the supervisor’s personal phrases fed the sensation of malaise.

After that Baggies shock, he mentioned these have been the kind of video games you needed to win in the event you had critical title ambitions, and added: “You do not have to be so intelligent to see the hole between this 12 months and former years”.

Even when Guardiola was maybe being intentionally untimely, he was additionally correct. Metropolis needed to type it, and so they have.

The critics and the pundits have been a bit too sharp in placing Metropolis to the again of their minds, just like the Blues had been a nightmare from which the Premier League was lastly awakening.

They might not even be ignored final season, with Liverpool galloping into the gap, as they remained the one faint hope of creating a race of it.

However final night time’s breathtaking destruction of West Brom, to take the Blues again to high spot, made them favourites to raise the title.

No person at Metropolis will take any discover of the bookies, particularly in a marketing campaign through which the fortunes of each membership within the high half of the desk has ebbed and flowed.

One factor Metropolis had executed, as soon as that surprising 5-2 dwelling defeat by Leicester had been digested, and Ruben Dias signed, was that they’ve sorted out their defensive wobbles.

They’ve the most effective defensive document within the league, simply 13 conceded – nearly half the quantity let in by second-placed Manchester United.

The query was whether or not they might re-discover their goalscoring mojo – at the same time as they began to string collectively outcomes, they have been simply eking out wins fairly than blowing anybody away.

Final night time at The Hawthorns they have been unstoppable, unplayable and unmistakably Guardiola’s Manchester Metropolis.

And now solely Liverpool, with 37, have extra objectives than Metropolis, with 36. It’s one other ominous signal for the opposite title contenders.

At the same time as they sneaked stealthily into second place, the main target remained on United, and harm to Kevin De Bruyne and sickness for Sergio Aguero forged recent doubt on the Blues’ title credentials.

However Ilkay Gundogan stepped into each of these breaches, ending just like the legendary Argentine and carving passes just like the mercurial Belgian.

And with the crew ticking away like a Swiss clock, unsung heroes like Gundogan, Joao Cancelo and Aleks Zinchenko have reminded everybody they’re high quality footballers, and don’t simply make up the numbers.

Transferring forward of United means little, specifically as that standing is more likely to reverse after the Reds face Sheffield United.

However the seven-point hole to a misfiring Liverpool seems to be extra telling, even when all predictions are perilous on this topsy-turvy season.

Extra importantly, the Manchester Metropolis of 2018 is again. The nightmare is recurring for the remainder of the Premier League.