Even for a club that has enjoyed such enormous success as Man City have in the Guardiola era, the 2022-23 campaign will live long in the memory as the Citizens swept all before them.
The blue half of Manchester joined the red half as the only English clubs to have completed the fabled treble of Premier League, FA Cup and Champions League glory, with City getting their hands on the latter trophy for the first time in their history.
The challenge now will be to continue scaling such unprecedented heights; Man City have had no problem backing up one domestic title success with another, but the Champions League was the club’s holy grail and there can so often be a drop-off after a team has reached the top of the mountain.
There have been few signs that Man City will let their standards slip, though, and they once again go into the new season as favourites to lift the Premier League title – something that
would see them become the first team in history to lift four top-flight English titles on the bounce, and further strengthen their claim to being the best team this country has ever produced.
There is a long road ahead of them before they can begin thinking about that, though, and some eyebrows may have been raised by their defeats to Atletico Madrid in pre-season and Arsenal on penalties in the Community Shield.
Guardiola will no doubt point to the fact that they have lost the Community Shield in each of the previous two seasons as well, yet gone on to win the title, but with many of their rivals spending big to strengthen this summer, there is more optimism than usual that City’s dominance could be challenged by more than one team this term.
Questions marks also remain over the futures of Kyle Walker and Bernardo Silva, and while more incomings are sure to arrive too, there is a valid debate as to whether Man City have been weakened overall so far this summer.
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The first real test of that theory will be a stern one on Friday night as they jointly raise the curtain on the new campaign with Burnley – a team led by their legendary former captain Kompany.
It is a very different Burnley to the one which was relegated from the Premier League in 2021-22, with Kompany managing to instantly change the footballing philosophy and experience success with the Clarets en route to the Championship title last season.
Burnley racked up a whopping 101 points and lost just three times – including only once at home – in the notoriously-difficult second tier, scoring a league-high 87 goals and conceding a league-low 35 on their way to finishing 10 points clear of their closest rivals.
There is little argument that Burnley were comfortably the best team in the Championship last season, then, but throughout the campaign Kompany was at pains to stress that such a status only made them the 21st-best team in England
