BUNDESLIGAFICATION

There is a trope that has been carried far and wide in recent times that the Premier League is as competitive as the Bundesliga, where Bayern Munich have won the title every year since the boy Jesus began to take his first faltering steps through the dusty side streets of Bethlehem.

This states that nobody can cope with City's "high ceiling" (if in fact there is a ceiling at all), it being a club, after all, that can spend anything they feel like spending. Generally, it's just not fair, we are constantly told. While some arguments carry a little more thrust than others, this is one that doesn't convince for a minute. 

The weekend's results will add grist to the mill. For those convinced City are running away with it, things could hardly have gone better. Despite actually starting the day in second place, the early kick off against an incredibly supine Leicester brought a one-goal victory that hoisted City to top spot. That was quickly followed by a spectacularly loose performance by Chelsea at Brighton and a series of comic capers from Liverpool in losing at home to a hitherto harmless Leeds. To top it all off, Tottenham had the mother and father of problems dispatching Bournemouth. 

Newcastle won well to keep their place in the top 4, but to include them as possible contenders will only bring gales of laughter and a wall of opprobrium about Saudi Arabian geopolitics. Mr. Klopp might also at this point want to interject to inform you of high ceilings and limitless transfer budgets, for when it comes to City and Newcastle, we all know the FFP sharks swim under the nearest rocks. They can spend what they want. 

This is, of course, not true.

If we consider budgets, all the sides in the top six should be competing and competing hard. Throw in the biggest spenders of the lot, Manchester United, and you have -potentially- a fascinating and thrilling title race something along the lines of the early 1970s that so many people now eulogise about.

John Cross of the Mirror was quoted from a BBC interview as saying City "would finish 20 points clear at the top", a hefty slice of prematurism if it ever existed. Cross was simply praising City for their slick superiority, I was told, but he was also adding to the argument that nobody stands a chance, which is inaccurate. With his beloved Arsenal sitting pretty at the top of the table when he uttered the words, it all looked a little bit comical. Let's face it, if you're giving up the ghost from top position, there has to be something seriously skewed with your attitude. Since then they have dispatched Forest 5-0. 

What is the point of predicting a 20-point title win when the club you are talking about is 2nd in the table? What purpose can this serve apart from solidifying the already multifarious tropes that City are ruining the competition of the Premier league? How can you ruin something from 2nd place? What purpose can there be to carry on with this argument every time City canter onto a football pitch to play football?

This is a City side that failed at Anfield, has drawn its last two Champions League games without scoring and beat Brighton and Leicester without convincing. There is nothing to suggest this side is about to crush all in its way. In a season that is about to be cleaved in two by the least anticipated World Cup in history, there will be even fewer certainties. Add City's near-obsessive glances towards the Champions League, and another destabilizing factor emerges. "Ah, but that is just one game" comes the reply. "Ah, but that is just a four-game dip" we hear again. Anything to steer away from the fact that they are beatable and that there is competition. 

If this is the Bundesliga in waiting, it is worth looking east for a second. Klopp, after all, managed in the top echelons there for many years and was a serious challenger for honours at Borussia Dortmund between 2008 and 2015. Dortmund collected two titles in his time there and reached the Champions League final at Wembley. However, they also sold Mario Gotze, Robert Lewandowki and Matts Hummels to Bayern, the equivalent of Txiki Begiristain descending upon Anfield Road to buy Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Thiago Alcantara. Imagine the press that little swoop would have got.

Since a Klopp-inspired Dortmund carried off the title in 2011-12 (ironically the same month Roberto Mancini delivered City's first Premier League win since the launching of the ark), Bayern have been champions every single year. That is 10 consecutive titles. In the same period in England, United, Chelsea, Liverpool, Leicester and City have been top dogs. City have won five of the 10 titles on offer and, admittedly, four of the last five, offering critics the chance to say this is the fast-moving ossification process of our domestic game. Liverpool did something similar in the 70s and were feted for it...

In the transfer market City have shied away from Cristiano Ronaldo, Alexis Sanchez, Lionel Messi, Kalidou Koulibaly, Marc Cucurella, Harry Kane< Jorginho and a host of others who were carrying the infamous City-surcharge of old. There is clearly no limitless budget. The blue sky and fluffy clouds that Klopp sees above the Etihad are stationed at the same height as those hovering over Anfield, Stamford Bridge and Old Trafford. That the German must call City the best team in the world as often as possible and claim his own side are plucky outsiders is a critical part of the image-building process that has won so many over. Surveying Liverpool's inept display against Leeds, it is tempting to ask what the then world's most expensive goalkeeper and world's most expensive defender were doing and how such an expensively and expertly constructed side can look so fallible. Is this the inability to compete or bad management, bad strategy, bad planning? Bolstering a squad that is already of the highest quality is not an afternoon picnic, as Liverpool have found. 

When John W Henry, a man not exactly shackled by poverty, took over at Anfield, he insisted that his new acquisition follow the Moneyball philosophy constructed by Cambridge Physician Ian Graham. He had employed similar tactics at Boston Red Sox, a badly spelled baseball team also under his tutelage. It has allowed him to recruit the likes of Allison and Van Dijk and now also splash £85m on Darwin Núñez, a half-honed product of two seasons' work in the Liga Portuguesa. Liverpool's spending, like that of Chelsea and Manchester United and, for that matter Arsenal, Tottenham, Everton, Aston Villa, Spurs and others has not had the look of impoverished non-starters about it.   

After City's initial splurge to gain access to the higher echelons, the last five years have seen spending on players and wages broadly bottom out to meet that of their rivals. The dreaded net spend puts City at the bottom of a league table currently being "won" by neighbours United. Judicious spending has been the answer at the Etihad, not careless overspending. Whilst City avoided the car crashes of Sanchez and Maguire, United piled in regardless. While City avoided paying over the odds for Kane and waited for Haaland, Liverpool splurged nervously on Núñez. While City offloaded the inconsistent scoring exploits of Raheem Sterling and Gabriel Jesus, they settled on Haaland to do the job. Maybe we should be asking how Liverpool, United and Chelsea can get it disastrously wrong and how City can get it right nine times out of ten spending less.  

Those that tell us the league is heading towards a closed shop are right in a sense, but it has been on this journey since the mid-80s when the then Big Five (rather laughably when considered from the high plains of 2022, but then including Everton) started their Machiavellian journey towards what we see today. It might not quite have worked for Everton, but the idea was sound enough: cordon off the gains, syphon off the prophets and stop others following. The infamous drawbridge since used to describe the start of the Premier League and thereafter the Champions league too. In other words, Protectionism. 

This has been alive and well for decades. The vast riches swilling around the game today just accentuate the difference between haves and have-nots in a world where Atletico Madrid and Juventus can be summarily outbid by West Ham and Fulham.

All of this devalues the immense input of Pep Guardiola, a once-in-a-generation coaching talent, who has overseen City's final ascent towards the world game's summit. Klopp's work must not be undervalued either, despite the arguments he uses to explain the perceived gulf between the two sides. That would be to do them both a huge disservice. That City's massive wealth has been put to better use than Liverpool's massive wealth and Chelsea's massive wealth has been spent almost as willy nilly as Manchester United's massive wealth is neither City's fault nor the dastardly work of a tilted playing field, but the work of dedicated professionals at the top of their game, on and off the Etihad pitch.

If City win the title again this season the background noise will increase once more. Money will surely be the ruination of the sport. It has already done untold damage, but that damage can be traced way back to 1986, not the arrival of City in the game's corridors of power in 2008 and the money ruining it is going on players who fail not those who succeed.