The beauty of Premier League’s final day masks plenty of ugly truths

In the calmer period between Manchester City’s raucous title win and the final presentation of the Premier League trophy, the huge crowd that remained were treated to a film. It was a montage of the key moments of the season, that naturally had a lot of superb goals and beautiful pieces of play. These were all met by cheers, but one emotion was largely missing. It happened to be precisely what made this last day so memorable. That was a genuine sense of jeopardy.

City’s rollicking comeback against Aston Villa offered one of very few periods of play since January when it felt like the title was in any kind of doubt.

And in doubt it really felt. There was a good stretch of the game when City were really panicking, and a specific period when they were collapsing.

The squad, for all the discussion about what the club is, had to dig in and draw out real human and sporting qualities. They had to show resolve. The match was going out of control. The memory of what happened at Real Madrid was only making it worse.

Pep Guardiola was able to joke about that later, after City had replicated Madrid and made it all better with three goals in five minutes. Dig in they did. Kevin De Bruyne took command, Ilkay Gundogan took his chances, having proven an inspired substitution by Guardiola.

It similarly ensured there was much less discussion over the decision to leave Jack Grealish on the bench. City’s marquee £100m signing was again surplus to requirements when inspiration was needed most.

It is a display of power in itself, to go with another season when Guardiola’s side breached 90 points. City ultimately had far too much for Villa. Once they got one – and arguably even after Villa got two, in that vintage way opposition can rile superior sides – it felt like there was an unstoppable momentum behind City completing a comeback.

“The second and third goal, the people helped us to score,” Guardiola beamed afterwards. “We felt it and smelled it, and I’m very pleased.”

He looked beyond pleased, as he joked about getting the cigars out for the celebration.

“In the last five years, four Premier Leagues,” Guardiola said. “These guys are legends. People have to admit. They are eternal in this club.”

Eternal in this club, no doubt… but in the Premier League? That may not be something people so readily admit, at least for some of the players.

The Catalan has spent the last few weeks complaining that more people wanted Liverpool to win the title, but it’s hard to think that is true. The debate around the booing of the national anthem at Wembley fed into the fact there does remain a resistance to the Anfield support. Many neutral fans would have preferred City preventing Jurgen Klopp’s side winning the title, the domestic treble and a possible quadruple.

That would have been too much for many to bear. City winning the title, though? That’s just something that happens now, to a super-funded level that is by this point as akin to an industrial process as sporting perseverance. The money makes it easier to accept as inevitable, so it consequently leaves many football fans fairly emotionless.

That only points to bigger discussions over the very nature of this sportswashing project, that have only grown in recent years. This is not to repeat arguments that are by now well rehearsed, but it does mean City are curiously fitting champions in that regard.

This has been the most geopolitical of seasons, and they are the most geopolitical of winners. It just emphasises what is happening to the wider game, as made clear by the futures of Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappe.

Consider some of the scenes on Sunday, that themselves evoked key themes from the season.

Premier League chief executive Richard Masters was there to present the trophy, at the same time as his competition continues an investigation into City over potential rule-breaking. Masters had earlier presided over a hierarchy that just waved through the Saudi Arabian takeover of Newcastle United, as soon as issues relating to broadcasting piracy were finally resolved. You couldn’t have a clearer indication of the priorities.

The recent controversy over Newcastle’s third kit only made farcically obvious the absurdity of that decision, particularly the ludicrous talk of “legally binding assurances” over separation of the Public Investment Fund and the Saudi state, but that was already long after the Chelsea situation illustrated some of the dangers of all this.

The London club have faced genuine threat of extinction, precisely because the Premier League had such a laissez-faire approach to ownership. Under Roman Abramovich, Chelsea were left subject to forces far larger than football. In short, for all the trophies they celebrated, one of the Premier League’s member institutions was not sufficiently protected.

Xural.com