Man City vs Chelsea: Why this could be the start of the next big rivalry of English football

Marcos Alonso’s stoppage time winner at the Etihad on Saturday will have no bearing on the destination of this season’s Premier League title. It could, perhaps, have an influence on when Chelsea and Manchester City meet again in 19 days’ time, in Istanbul or elsewhere, to contest the Champions League final. But beyond that, what might it say about the title races to come?

That was one of the more interesting questions to come out of Chelsea’s late and largely inconsequential 2-1 win, which delayed City’s coronation as champions but did not make it any less likely. This was a game Pep Guardiola could afford to lose. Still, for the second time in the space of a month, after victory in the FA Cup semi-finals a few weeks ago, Thomas Tuchel had got the better of him.

Like the win at Wembley, Saturday’s victory came with caveats. City named a rotated line-up in both games, for example, and the drop-off in performance between Guardiola’s first and second strings must be starting to worry him. For a manager fond of rotation, he now has a clear first-choice line-up. Tuchel’s Chelsea are yet to face City’s strongest XI. Injury-permitting, they will in the final.

But whatever happens in Istanbul, Guardiola is said to have been hugely impressed with the transformation under Tuchel in the past few months, and if this trilogy ends with another Chelsea victory and a clean sweep for the former Paris Saint-Germain head coach, it will only lend credence to the argument that City’s main domestic challenge next season will come from Stamford Bridge.

Results suggest as much. Tuchel’s league record since his January appointment reads 10 wins, five draws and a solitary defeat while down to 10 men against West Bromwich Albion. Chelsea’s 35 points from those 16 matches averages out to 2.19-per-game – a better record than 10 previous Premier League title winners, though admittedly some way short of the standard set by City, Liverpool and Antonio Conte’s Chelsea in recent years.

Still, that is a better record than second-place Manchester United’s 2.03 points-per-game since the start of the campaign, and not far away from City’s season-long pace of 2.29. In other words, it is a promising start for Tuchel and a strong platform heading into his first full season in charge. And in the case of Chelsea, he is managing at a club that has the resources to build on it.

While City’s other rivals with different, more traditional ownership models scramble around to fund their summer spending after a season without fans in stadiums, Roman Abramovich provides a more reliable source of financing. The same is true of City and their ownership model, of course. Abramovich and Abu Dhabi are estimated to have provided a combined £1.7bn of financing to their respective clubs over the past decade, which is the most of any Premier League owners by far.

It is no coincidence, either, that of the six top-flight clubs to attempt to break away and join the Super League, Chelsea and City were the last ones in and first ones out. While guaranteed revenues year after year were clearly an attractive proposition to their owners, the Super League was not viewed as the essential, post-Covid reform that it was to Manchester United, Liverpool and the other clubs involved, who are more dependent on the income they earn from playing in the Champions League.

United may dispute that, and the wider point about Chelsea being City’s next great challengers after a season of steady improvement under Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, but while there are several key areas of their squad which require work over the summer, that is not necessarily the case at Stamford Bridge. Liverpool, meanwhile, should recover and recuperate once their injuries have cleared up but Jurgen Klopp’s squad has a core of players at the tail-end of their prime and will soon need to be rebuilt.

Then there is the fact that both City and Chelsea appear to have mastered the art of pandemic football, with Guardiola and Tuchel both adopting a style that prioritises control through slow, patient possession, preserving the fitness of their players in the process. It does not always make for a great spectacle, as any one who watched the FA Cup semi-final or the first half on Saturday can attest, but it gives them a stranglehold on almost every game they play, making them defensively austere and dominant.

Though English football appears to be emerging out from the worst of the pandemic, the effects of Covid will still be felt next season, even with crowds back in the stands and a slightly less congested schedule. By the end of next season, those competing at the European Championship will have spent the best part of two years playing football without much of a break. Of the Premier League’s elite, City and Chelsea have shown an ability to survive and thrive in this strange, new reality. We may be witnessing the start of the top flight’s next top rivalry.