It's a two-point Premier League title race. But can this Manchester City do a Manchester City?

By Sam Lee, Manchester City correspondent

Manchester City’s 2-1 win over Newcastle United has trimmed the gap at the top to two points and, once again, the football world is asking the only question that matters in May: can this City side do what every City side since 2018 has done and simply keep on winning?

Pep Guardiola’s answer, delivered with a smile but no shortage of caution, was emphatically non-committal. “I promise you, I’m honest with you, many things are going to happen!” he said. “I have the feeling we are not going to win all the games.”

The temptation to pencil City in for a sixth title in seven years is understandable. Arsenal’s recent wobbles have reopened a door that appeared to have slammed shut in March, while Guardiola’s team have responded with back-to-back statement victories — the late triumph at Anfield and now the hard-fought dismissal of Newcastle — that feel like the opening chords of a familiar symphony.

History backs the instinct. In each of the last four seasons City have produced a spring surge to overhaul the leaders: 2023 and 2024 saw them hunt down Arsenal; 2022 erased Liverpool’s advantage on the final day; 2021 featured a 24-match winning streak in all competitions; 2019 required a perfect 14-match league finish to edge Liverpool again. The pattern is so ingrained that bookmakers and pundits alike have begun to treat it as football law.

Yet this iteration of City is anything but a carbon copy. Since January 2025 the club has said goodbye to Ederson, Kyle Walker, Manuel Akanji, Ilkay Gundogan, Jack Grealish and Kevin De Bruyne — a exodus Guardiola privately labels a “brain drain”. Eleven senior signings have arrived in the same window, pushing the average age of the squad down to 25, the fourth youngest in the division. Academy graduate Nico O’Reilly has gone from emergency left-back to midfield mainstay, while Matheus Nunes has been reinvented as a right-back and World Cup winner Gianluigi Donnarumma has already produced a catalogue of match-defining saves, the latest a late denial of Anthony Gordon that preserved Saturday’s three points.

Guardiola’s captaincy group — Rodri, Bernardo Silva, Ruben Dias and Erling Haaland — were hand-picked last summer, ending the club’s tradition of a player vote. Only ten members of the current squad have previously won a major trophy with City, and four of them — John Stones, Mateo Kovacic, Nathan Ake and Rico Lewis — have started a combined nine league matches in 2026.

“We have 70 per cent new players,” the manager reiterated. “They have never lived this situation.” The consequence is a team that can look irresistible for 45 minutes and fragile for the next 45. City have repeatedly failed to kill games this season, a flaw Guardiola blames on poor build-up play in the second half and a lack of training time to bed in new combinations. Against Newcastle they survived waves of late pressure because, in Guardiola’s words, “we were a team — a team we have to be,” rather than the swashbuckling outfit of old.

The schedule offers no mercy. With Arsenal travelling across north London on Sunday, the gap could shrink to a single point before City play again, and Guardiola’s side still face trips to Spurs, Brighton and Aston Villa, three venues where they have already dropped points this campaign. The manager insists the title is not decided by form in April but by the ability to “win 1-0 when you play rubbish,” a mantra he fears his newcomers have yet to absorb.

Still, the door is ajar. Arsenal’s recent defeats to West Ham and Crystal Palace have evaporated the cushion that once felt impregnable, and City’s momentum is building at the precise moment memories of past comebacks are freshest. Whether this youthful, transitional squad can replicate the relentless streaks of its predecessors remains the league’s compelling subplot.

Guardiola, for one, is not ready to declare anything. “Perfect game? No. Ideal game? No,” he said of the Newcastle win. “But we were a team.”

In a two-point race, that might yet be enough. Then again, this is a club that has taught the world to expect the unexpected — from both sides of the narrative.

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