Pep Guardiola's summer rebuild has restored Manchester City's old swagger

Independent

a day ago

The winds of change are blowing through Manchester City but some things remain the same.
Different faces and a different time - but that old familiar swagger returned at Molineux. Three thousand travelling supporters, basking in the sunshine along the foot of the Steve Bull Stand, sang: 'City are back.'
Had they ever really been away?
Two years have passed since the epoch-defining treble and only four of the side that started on the club's greatest night in Istanbul were named by Pep Guardiola at Molineux. And two of them - John Stones and Bernardo Silva - are in the final year of their contract.
There's no Kevin de Bruyne, no Rodri and no Jack Grealish. Moved on, laid up and kicked out. Ederson - the cornerstone of everything Guardiola stands for - is on the cusp of a move to Turkey. Club warrior, Kyle Walker, is finding out how the other half live in Burnley. And Ilkay Gundogan, on the substitutes' bench, should have 999 on the back of his shirt: Only to be used in an emergency.
It feels like a new page was being turned at Molineux.
And this new-model side needs to re-establish the credentials that carried it to so much success. This was a pretty good start.
Manchester City's cloak of invincibility was torn - not shredded - last season but this is elite sport and, as the watching public is told repeatedly, the margins are fine.
Standards need to slip by a few degrees of competency and results can be affected. There is no hiding place, after all. And once the confidence-supreme upon which the club's success was built is slowly eroded, then others will scent blood.
That's how it was at Molineux.
Initial trepidation among the home support. Fifteen minutes of adhering to a tight shape and then those in the old gold shirts began to chance their luck.
Marshall Munetsi had a goal wiped out for offside and the natives smelled blood. They should have known better.
This vintage do not possess De Bruyne's magical quality of creating something out of nothing. This painter of pictures, this ammunition-provider, has moved to pastures new to Naples, where the microscope will be equally fierce.
Guardiola has had to find someone else to load the gun but no-one yet knows the true pedigree of Tijjani Reijnders, Oscar Bobb or Nico Gonzalez.
Are they the real deal, capable of stringing together victory after victory? Of inhabiting the rarefied air at the top of the Premier League and fighting battles on several fronts?
It might be over-stating the situation after the evidence of one 90-minute performance but while there were glitches in the system, there was hope of a return to the all-conquering days of the year before last.
All that pressure was bound to tell on a group of players that was getting old together. It needed refreshing. It needed looked at again.
And the post-season interview from Sheikh Mansour suggested that this was very much the case as a new cluster of players look set to prove themselves worthy of a club that has become conditioned to winning during the past decade.
It is still too early to tell from where the next crop of heroes will come but there can be no doubting the quality of some of them.
For instance, the outstanding invidivual on show was Reijnders. In the white-hot heat of the engine-room at this level, Rodri has proved himself supreme.
Any team on the planet would miss the talent of a man who picked up the Ballon d'Or and his absence is again a source of worry.
But not so much now as the £46m AC Milan midfielder looked more than capable of providing a viable alternative. It can be said right now: The prospect of Rodri teaming up with this guy will be one to savour.
And what of Nico Gonzalez? He has proved more of a miss than a hit since his arrival at the club but there were the signs of recovery in his play.
Rayan Ait-Nouri was a withdrawn soul on this, on his return to his former club, but he did enough to suggest that he will become a favourite and well capable of plugging a gap on the left-hand side defence. It has been an Achilles heel for some time. Maybe no more.
It was difficult to pass judgement on keeper James Trafford because the visitors dominated but he was clean, tidy and did what he had to do.
The faces from yesteryear will never fade away at the Eithad. They achieved too much. But time waits for no man in football.
Guardiola, and his paymasters have recognised that. Ninety minutes is not a decent sample size. But it's fair to say that whatever was broken last season is well on its way to being mended.