Victory, draw or defeat this Saturday won’t decide Chelsea or Manchester City’s seasons. There will still be 31 Premier League games left to go, not to mention the chance to settle the score in the reverse fixture later in the campaign.
Psychologically, however, it’s impossible to ignore the potential impact, especially as both teams are largely unknown quantities at this point. The fixture beckons the adages of ‘six-pointer’ and ‘making a statement’, due to their close proximity in the table and their shared ambitions for the campaign, but what do we really know about either side heading into Saturday’s 5.30pm kickoff?
After a summer of ruthless re-modification, Antonio Conte has created a different animal to the Chelsea side that claimed last season’s title; one that has exchanged the sharp, rugged tooth of Diego Costa for the silkier and smoother Alvaro Morata and the midfield experience of Nemanja Matic for the prodigious ability of Tiemoue Bakayoko, while even Gary Cahill has found himself dislodged from the back three by summer signing Antonio Rudiger in recent weeks.
Likewise, for all the sensational attacking verve City have shown this season, scoring 21 times in the top flight, Pep Guardiola’s side are yet to be truly tested by a team of a similar ability – the closest they’ve got so far is a 5-0 demolition of Liverpool at home, when Sadio Mane’s sending off instigated a Reds collapse.
Of course, you can only play what’s in front of you but that’s exactly why Saturday’s game could catch people off guard; the table doesn’t accurately reflect the quality of every Premier League’s side just yet, while a clash between two title hopefuls will give us a clearer idea of the true balance of power at the division’ summit.
The theme linking both teams, however, is how much they spent during the summer and the high esteem their managers are held in. The two clubs shelled out roughly £400million on new signings before the transfer deadline and the Premier League has now become the top flight of the super-star manager, even if super-star players aren’t as present as they once were. Conte and Guardiola indisputably belong in that bracket.
Which, in turn, is what makes Saturday’s encounter so important, even this early in the season. For all the managerial quality on offer in the Premier League and for all the clubs who can spend small fortunes tailoring their squads to their manager’s philosophies, only one team can win the title. The fact we haven’t seen a successful title defence Manchester United in since 2009 shows how hard it now is to claim English football’s top honour and this season already, we’ve seen three or four sides with a justifiable claim to being the best in the league.
While the potential victor this weekend will feel they’ve come one small but significant step closer, the loser will inevitably have to consider the possibility of missing out and the likely consequences. Of course, there are two more trophies on offer domestically and one in Europe. But for the money spent and the faith placed in the men in the dugouts, the Premier League title seems like a must.
Guardiola himself has already questioned the integrity of the Carabao Cup and we’ve now reached a point where both of English football’s cup competitions are viewed as little more than consolation prizes for the also-rans. Neither Chelsea nor City can afford to become one of those.
But amid an era of world-class managers and unprecedented competitiveness, it seems almost unrealistic to expect so much from the gaffers we fetishise. Can it really be argued Jose Mourinho deserves the sack if Manchester United don’t win this season’s title? Would it be fair to label Chelsea’s campaign a failure if they don’t successfully defend the crown? Should we expect Guardiola to win the title in his second season, when his methods are so much more demanding, precise and unique than Manuel Pellergini’s?
The rational response is quite simply no, but that would contradict the self-perpetuating short-termism of the Premier League and the relentless hyperbole that comes with it. When put into black and white, it will be hard for Conte or Guardiola to justify not winning the Premier League title after the money they’ve spent and while tabloid inquests into their futures will likely come at the end of the season, the reaction to the result on Saturday will give a snippet of how strong those feelings are – whether there are doubts over Guardiola’s project at the Etihad Stadium, or whether those disputes between Conte and his paymasters from the summer suddenly re-emerge.
Yet, removing either at the end of the season would be incredibly short-sighted. There are only a handful of managers outside of England who can hold a candle to either Guardiola or Conte at this moment in time and changing up would only require another blank cheque in the transfer market as a new man comes in with new ideas, new demands and new targets.
And thus, we reach the twilight the Premier League now resides in, where short-termism and the lack of more convincing alternatives meet. Only once force can prevail; loyalty to the men at the top of their respective fields or the hire-and-fire, never-stand-still, ruthless culture of the English game. Liverpool’s former chief executive Rick Parry once joked £500million was one hell of a price for Chelsea to pay for a League Cup during a season that saw them miss out on the title, but that is the reality the clubs at the very pinnacle of the Premier League now face.
The traditional reaction has been to rip apart and start anew, yet the many managers who could but inevitably won’t win the title this time around may go on to receive a much more lenient fate – you can’t win them all when the competition is so intense and the margins are so severely thin. In any case, Chelsea vs Manchester City serves an early season reminder – over the course of ninety minutes and the whole campaign, only one club can win it.
