The blessing and the curse of Pep Guardiola staying so long at Manchester City is that there are so many reference points. It's great to be able to think back to similar situations, but there are so many that things can quickly change.

For example, last season came to resemble bits of the 2016/17 and the 2019/20 campaigns. They are obvious starting points because they are the only other years Guardiola didn't win the league at the Etihad , but the performances had both the end-of-an-era feeling of the manager's first year in Manchester and the problems in the boxes without a strong defence that they had without Vincent Kompany and the injured Aymeric Laporte.

Following on from that, this summer was billed as in line with the summer of 2017 when City had the mother of all transfer w

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