It says a lot about how this season has been for everyone involved: on this day, Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur accepted their utter defeat and went all-in on their relegation battles, while Nottingham Forest prevailed again to remain in the Championship title. The most surprising incident of the day was Manchester City taking an undisputed lead before half-time against Ipswich Town.
This is really nothing more than what City have done countless times against countless teams over countless seasons, but still quite a lot of seasons. Even the main architects of such a huge win for Manchester City won’t come as much of a shock to those who spent most of the 24/25 game sleeping, Kevin De Bruyne and Phil Foden was very noticeable, while Erling Haaland didn’t feature much but scored one goal.
Well, for the first time in a long time, City are truly back to their happy place.
Of course, there have been some recent wins, and big ones. But this is definitely the most urban style and heft of them all.
Their most recent Premier League success came against Leicester City, and even more convincingly in Lopetegui’s dog days against a fractured West Ham side. It’s not like losing the locker room, it’s just that it didn’t succeed in having the locker room in the first place.
Then against Brentford they dropped two points at the end.
So while things have certainly improved from the dark days of November and December, City have never really looked back until now. For the first time there was truly no evidence of Broken City, and we watched the historically bad outcome with horror, confusion, and laughter.
The question now is really how far they can go. If we do see the start of another great end to the season for Manchester City, the answer to that question will most likely still be “second”, which will be rather dull but also more interesting than it really has any right to be. More so.
At least Manchester City had an overwhelming victory On the same weekend as Newcastle’s defeat left them again Occupy the top four driving positions.
Of course, there’s less accomplished here than anywhere else, but considering how bad things got for quite some time, it’s definitely not all bad.
The redesigned Champions League format also gives them enough time to fix the mistakes of late 2024, with midweek not only giving them a chance to reach the play-offs, but also putting PSG on the verge of an embarrassing early exit.
As for Ipswich, the real consolation is that days like these are relatively rare and there are still plenty of teams fighting against relegation with them. This isn’t an area to shrug off, because it just isn’t good enough.
Ipswich have been better than this this season against better teams than Manchester City, and the individual errors that marred that performance should not and will not be completely ignored.
But realistically, scoring against Manchester City is now a better result than scoring against a further, more direct opponent. like manchester united or tottenham hotspur.
This season has been a long journey indeed for Ipswich, Manchester City and just about everyone else.
