James Ducker Northern Football Correspondent 22 May 2022 5:55pm BST In many ways, Manchester City’s final day comeback was utterly typical of a season where the constant theme has been Pep

Guardiola and his staff having to find solutions for the myriad problems bubbling away beneath the surface. Even those within the club have had concerns as to whether they would be caught by

Liverpool, with those fears reaching a peak six or seven weeks ago. Not panic - they don’t really do panic at City, although you might not have thought so when they trailed Aston Villa by

two goals with just 14 minutes remaining - but a very sobering acceptance that it was going to take something special to absorb the relentless pressure Jürgen Klopp’s side were applying.

the 2018/19 campaign when, seven points adrift of Liverpool at the turn of the year, they successfully hunted down Klopp’s side to clinch the title by a point on the final day. Back then,

it was City who gained added momentum and confidence from beating Chelsea on penalties in the final of the League Cup and a run to the FA Cup final. Three years on, Liverpool - who had been

14 points adrift at one stage in January albeit with two games in hand - were doing the same. “We recognised those footprints - we had tread them ourselves,” as one source put it this week.

Yet a relaxed looking Guardiola was able to repress any fears and successfully project an aura of calm and, in many ways, it has served as an appropriate metaphor for a season in which they

have had to find so many solutions for the issues that have reared their head. Guardiola’s fourth championship in five seasons has, more than anything, been a concerted exercise in football

specific problem solving that has been so skilfully navigated it would be easy to think it has been relatively plain sailing. “No one probably quite appreciates the number of difficulties

because they’ve all been dealt with so efficiently but there have been problems this season that, in other hands, could have easily have blown up,” one insider said. NO STRIKER? SO SCORE

FROM SET-PIECES Back in the summer of 2019, City failed to replace their departing captain and defensive lynchpin, Vincent Kompany, often looked vulnerable at the back and watched Liverpool

romp to the title. Fears there could be similar issues at the opposite end of the pitch when Guardiola’s hopes of replacing Sergio Agüero with Harry Kane collapsed had only hardened when

City, despite some high-scoring victories, failed to score in six of their opening 16 matches of the campaign. Erling Haaland’s arrival from Borussia Dortmund will offer City something

completely different upfront next season but no one should underestimate how desperate Guardiola had been to unite with Kane last summer. He loves the England captain, considers him the

perfect hybrid of No 9 and No 10 and was probably more disappointed than anyone at the club that a deal could not be struck with Tottenham. But City have negotiated the absence of a

world-class centre forward in various compelling ways and one of the most striking, particularly for a side synonymous with beautiful, open play football, has been their strength - both

offensively and defensively - from set-pieces. Almost a quarter of their league goals have come from dead ball situations - 22 all told, 15 from corners, seven from free-kicks - which is

comfortably the most in the Premier League this term. Even more remarkably, City have conceded just once from a set-piece themselves, also the best record in the division, despite hardly

being the tallest or most physically imposing of sides and missing their most commanding defender, Ruben Dias, for a lot of the run in. It is all the more impressive given that they lost

their set-piece coach, Nicolas Jover, to Arsenal last July but his replacement, Carlos Vicens, has made them more adaptable and innovative, even if so much stems from the quality of Kevin De

Bruyne’s delivery. A DRESSING-DOWN FOR GREALISH AND FODEN The Kane saga aside, the summer was rocky for City, despite the record £100 million arrival of Jack Grealish from Aston Villa. The

European Championship, Copa América and Olympics wrecked pre-season, De Bruyne and Phil Foden missed the first month of the campaign through injury and then there were the issues with

Bernardo, Aymeric Laporte and Raheem Sterling. Bernardo suffered badly during lockdown, missed his family and would have left if the right offer had come along but he has reintegrated so

well you would not have known there were troubles there. The same has been true of Laporte who, having grown disillusioned by his lack of regular game time last term, has had arguably his

best season for the club. Sterling had the capacity to be the most problematic issue of the three. City had been prepared to use him as a makeweight in any deal for Kane but the England

forward was having none of it. He also lost his place in the five-strong captain’s group after Dias was voted in at his expense and, in mid-October, admitted in an interview that he might

have to leave if he did not get more playing time. Guardiola and Sterling agreed to disagree over certain matters during clear the air talks but the player was told the door remained very

much open. Sterling buckled down, his game time improved and discussions on his future put on hold until the end of the season. At other clubs, the situation could have spiralled and become

a persistent, unwelcome distraction but sideshows at City are rare and, when they do flare, they are usually nipped in the bud quickly.   Guardiola, for example, was furious to discover that

Foden and Grealish had turned up distinctly worse for wear for a warm-down session the morning after enjoying a boozy night out in the wake of a 7-0 hammering of Leeds in December. The

manager was in Barcelona to attend a press conference in which an emotional Agüero announced his retirement and was incandescent when news of the pair’s behaviour was relayed by staff.

Privately, he felt they had sought to take advantage of his absence as well as being unprofessional but that they had also defied his instructions for players to be extra careful when

venturing out given the continuing threat of Covid and the larger crowds at Christmas. Guardiola responded by dropping both players for the games against Newcastle and Leicester and warned

those who fell short of the standards expected would not play. His authority was immediately reaffirmed. Eight matches which put City on track for the title COMING THROUGH THE BRUGES

‘CRISIS’ In the main, Guardiola has appeared more relaxed this season than arguably at any point during his six-year tenure at the club. He began to move that way more during lockdown, when

he started leaving his Nissan Leaf in the garage and instead cycled the three miles into work from his apartment block in Salford. But there was nothing calm and relaxed about Guardiola in

the days leading up to the Manchester derby in early November when the chaos down the road at Old Trafford had conveniently clouded some of the early season concerns at City. When City beat

Bruges 4-1 in the Champions League that midweek, a few days after De Bruyne, still suffering agonising pain from an ankle injury at the Euros, had been substituted before the hour mark of a

2-0 defeat at home by Crystal Palace, observers recalled seeing a very stressed looking Guardiola standing in the centre-circle making a series of agitated phone calls. He did not try to

hide his emotions from the players, either. Sources remember Guardiola walking into the dressing room and declaring to his stunned players: “I can’t do this any more”. Whatever that was

about, Guardiola’s mood was transformed after the systematic 2-0 dismantling of Manchester United. It would kick-start a run of 12 successive league wins and offered an emphatic illustration

of the manager’s insistence that patience and _pausa_ - that willingness to make that extra pass and wait for just the right moment to strike - were integral to their hopes of success in

the absence of a Kane or Haaland. Some felt that game, and the superb 2-1 comeback win against Paris Saint-Germain in the Champions League a couple of weeks later, really “ignited” the

season. There was also a mixture of amusement and astonishment after the derby when word filtered back that one high-ranking Old Trafford official, seemingly oblivious to the chasm between

the sides, had implied City had simply got lucky with their goals given United’s mistakes. The goalscoring burden has been evenly spread and different players have taken the lead at

different times. Joao Cancelo did so earlier in the season from a marauding full-back position, a fully fit and firing De Bruyne in more recent months. There has been great consistency from

the likes of Rodri, outstanding at the base of the midfield, and Bernardo, now free from lockdown and once again able to visit his favourite Lebanese restaurant in Manchester, Comptoir

Libanais, and make those beloved trips to castle hotels across the UK with his girlfriend, Ines, and their dog John (named after team-mate John Stones). Riyad Mahrez, City’s top scorer

across all competitions with 24 goals, has had his best season for the club. Guardiola experimented with different players in the false nine position but none took to it as well as Foden,

who has matured significantly as a player over the past 10 months. To underline the emphasis placed on the collective, City’s players refer to the substitutes very deliberately as

“finishers” and there were 12 goal involvements from those who came off the bench in the league.  City’s impressive reaction in the league after losing first to Liverpool and then Real

Madrid in the semi-finals of the FA Cup and Champions League respectively strengthened Guardiola’s belief that his players would see through the job, and made him wonder how anyone could

reasonably question their character. Still, there was some disquiet when City’s medical department were required to treat the squad a total of 71 times in a 64-hour period between a bruising

goalless draw against Atlético Madrid and that Cup defeat at Wembley. Fatigue and injuries were their biggest threat now - greater even than Liverpool - but, for all the artistry of these

City players, they are and remain a steely bunch.