City's ruthless control makes double-treble seem like the default option

Pep Guardiola’s team look poised to enter annihilation mode inthe title run-in: but are they actually interesting?

- Barney Ronay

And so it came to pass. Although it has to be said, and with all due deference to the need for a little dramatic tension, in precisely the way most people watching seem to have expected.

As the Premier League season begins to narrow, the front runners heading into the home bend will look reassuringly familiar for Manchester City. Whatever chance there might have been of an outsider in the medal spots appears to have been safely reeled in. The remaining challengers are already straining at full capacity. Eyes boggled, hamstrings squeaking as, on their shoulder, a blur of silken shorts and skinny-legged resolve with Pep Guardiola readying himself for the familiar kick to the line.

Victory at Brentford on Monday night makes it 11 wins and a draw in City’s last 12 games across all competitions. The three key players from last season’s innovative treble-winning structure, Kevin De Bruyne, John Stones and Erling Haaland, are all approaching fully operational status, ready to appear on the pitch together for the first time since the Champions League final in June. And beyond the bleachers there is a sense of some wider sky beginning to beckon.

By Tuesday morning City were listed at 9-1 with the bookies not just to win the league, not just to win the double, or indeed the treble, but to win a first-ever double-treble. It is measure of this team’s unparalleled certainties, their ability to win games while steamrollering any real sense of competitive variables, that this still feels cautious; that a feat no other team ha ve achieved seems like the default option from here, a thing that is more rather than less likely to happen.