The winds of change are blowing through Manchester City, but some things remain the same.
Different faces and another time – but the old familiar Swagger returned to Molineux. Three thousand travelers supporters basking in the sunshine along the foot of the Steve Bull stand, sang: “The city is back.”
Had they ever really gone away?
Two years have passed since the epoch-defining treble and only four of the side that started at the club’s biggest evening in Istanbul was named by Pep Guardiola in Molineux. And two of them – John Stones and Bernardo Silva – are in the last year of their contract.
There is no Kevin de Bruyne, no Rodri and no Jack Grealish. Go ahead, put up and kick out. Ederson – the cornerstone of everything Guardiola stands for – is on a step to a move to Turkey. Club Warrior Kyle Walker finds out how the other half lives in Burnley. And Ilkay Gundogan, on the replacement bench, should have 999 on the back of his shirt: only to be used in an emergency.
It feels like a new page was turned on Molineux.
And this new model I have to restore credentials that led to such a great success. This was a pretty good start.
Manchester City’s cloak of the invincibility was torn – not shredded – last season, but this is elite sports and as seeing the public repeatedly being told, the margins are fine.
Standards must slip with a few degrees of competence and the results can be affected. After all, there is no hiding place. And when the confidence-superior on which the club’s success was built, slowly eroded, other scent will blood.
That’s how it was at Molineux.
Initial congestion among the home support. Fifteen minutes of adhesion of a tight shape, and then in the old gold jerseys they began to chance their luck.
Marshall Munetsi had a target wiped out for offside and the natives smelled blood. They should have known better.
This vintage does not possess the magic quality of the Bruyne by creating something out of nothing. This painter of images, this ammunition provider, has been moved to grasslands new in Naples, where the microscope will be just as hard.
Guardiola has had to find someone else to load the gun, but no one knows the true pedigree of Tijjani Reijnders, Oscar Bobb or Nico Gonzalez yet.
Are they the right deal capable of winding victory after victory? To inhabit the rare air at the top of the Premier League and match matches on multiple fronts?
It can exaggerate the situation after the evidence of a 90-minute performance, but even though there were errors in the system, there was hope for a return to this year’s all-sore days before last.
All this pressure was tied to tell about a group of players who were old together. It needed refreshing. It was necessary looked at again.
And the interview after the season from Sheikh Mansour suggested that this was largely the case when a new cluster of players seems to prove worthy of a club that has been conditioned by winning in the last decade.
It is still too early to tell where the next crop of heroes is coming, but there can be no doubt about the quality of some of them.
For example, the excellent individual who was shown was Reijnders. In the white heat of the engine room at this level, Rodri has proved at the top.
Any team on the planet would miss the talent of a man who picked up the balloon d’Or and his absence is again a source of concern.
But not so much now that £ 46m AC Milan Midfielder so more than able to provide a viable alternative. It can be said right now: The view of Rodri, who goes with this guy, will be one to enjoy.
And what about Nico Gonzalez? He has proved more of a miss than a hit since his arrival at the club, but there were signs of improvement in his acting.
Rayan Ait-Nouri was a laid-back soul about this when he returned to his former club, but he did enough to suggest that he will be a favorite and well able to connect a gap on the left defense. It’s been an Achilles heel for some time. Maybe no more.
It was difficult to search a verdict on the keeper James Trafford because the visitors dominated, but he was pure, tidy and did what he had to do.
The faces of yesterday never fall away on Eitha. They achieved too much. But time is waiting for no man in football.
Guardiola and his wage master have acknowledged it. 90 minutes is not a decent sample size. But it is fair to say that no matter what was broken last season, is well on your way to being repaired.