How Man City and Pep Guardiola are battling history to land an unprecedented quadruple
Will they win one, two, three… or all four? Manchester City are about to resume their bid for an unprecedented quadruple and one of the things on their side is that – unlike most other teams – they have been here before.
No club has ever landed the Premier League, Champions League, FA Cup and League Cup all in the same season, but this is City’s fourth serious attempt at a clean sweep in the past seven years.
That experience of chasing multiple major trophies in the final few weeks of the season should help them this time, as much for what went wrong previously as what they got right – and one of the lessons learned should have been that slip-ups can happen anywhere.
Right now, on paper, a potential Champions League semi-final showdown with Bayern Munich or Paris St-Germain probably looks like the biggest obstacle to what would be the greatest achievement in English club football’s 133-year history.
City should beware of banana skins, however. They have previously appeared in some unlikely places – Wigan (twice) and Tottenham were the teams who stopped their charge on four fronts in 2014, 2018 and 2019.
Agencies