There’s another word for Manchester City’s dominance: unhealthy | Jonathan Wilson

Tthis included perhaps, generously, about 20 minutes on Sunday Mohammed Kudus‘s goal to pull West Ham within one and Rodri putting Manchester city 3-1, when there was something that, if you looked hard enough, looked a little like danger. But in reality the last day was as good as done after 76 seconds Phil Foden puts City ahead. The big title race ended with a distinct sense of anticlimax.

When Arsenal Drawn against City at the end of March, Arsenal led by four points after playing a game more. It was thought at the time that the goalless draw suited Arsenal more as it maintained their lead. If they win the remaining seven games, they will be champions. But given the way the match played in March, the dullness and relative comfort with which Arsenal contained City, there was also a sense that it represented a missed opportunity for Arsenal. Considering City won just two of their ten games against the top six this season; Could Arsenal have been a little more proactive? Could they have put clear water between themselves and City? Because it turns out they needed it.

There was much discussion last season about whether Arsenal had bottlenecked the title race, or whether their late-season stumble was a natural consequence of their relatively slim squad. In reality, it was probably a bit of both: collapsing from comfortable positions Liverpool and West Ham had little to do with the players available. There has been no similar capitulation this season. They will be looking at defeats Fulham and West Ham over Christmas and then in the run-up against Aston Villa and know that a win in any of these would have clinched the title, but all teams lose games. Or at least they should. Total 89 points with a goal difference of +62 would have become champions last season and in more than half of the seasons with 20 teams in the Premier League.

But what City are doing deviates from what used to be considered normal. Since that draw against Arsenal, they have won nine of nine, all by at least two goals. They are undefeated in 35 games. They are the first team in the 136-year history of the English top flight to win the title four seasons in a row. They have won six of the last seven championships, an unprecedented level of dominance. You can attribute that to the brilliance of Pep Guardiolathe resources behind the club, their expenditure on wages, the acuity of their recruitment or the charges surrounding alleged violations of financial regulations, but that kind of superiority is unhealthy for a league that has historically prided itself on its competitiveness.

As Barney Ronay noted on Saturday, with this season’s summit being the same as last season’s and the three promoted sides all being relegated – with three of the worst 20 points in Premier League history, what looked like a relatively entertaining season, ended in a feeling of uselessness. What was the point of all this?

Aston Villa obviously deserves a lot of credit for managing to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in the tournament’s modern guise, and perhaps especially for the oddity of doing so despite the fact that the season started and ended with five setbacks. Crystal Palacemuch improved under Oliver Glasner and since the return of Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze from injury, the last few weeks have been fun, and Brighton, Bournemouth, Wolves and Fulham have had their moments, but none of it is really a surprise.

Even on Chelsea, reliably comedic for several months, it seems the fun is over: They finished the season with five straight wins. Only the top three have taken more points than them since Boxing Day, and that is the intention Mauricio Pochettino has finally sorted through the mess left behind by a £1 billion indiscriminate spending to find a workable system.

Thank goodness, then Manchester Unitedstill boldly defying reality by repeatedly being a complete mess despite having the highest wage bill in the league – although even that could be in jeopardy if it turns out that Jim Ratcliffe has more insight into running a football club than he did of the likely consequences of Brexit.

City may have won the title by just two points, but this is a bit like 2018/19, when they beat Liverpool by one point by winning their last fourteen games of the season, while Liverpool won their last nine: seemingly close but essentially as dramatic as the final stage of the Tour de France as the classification leaders drive down the Champs Elysées.

English football, it turns out, got along with oligarchs, hedge funds and foreign states running their clubs when they were brash and inefficient. However, phenomenal wealth plus ultimate competence (and perhaps, depending on what happens with those accusations, something else), equals an excellence that is predictable and perhaps a little boring.

On this day

Barcelona haven’t always been the club they are today, impoverished and desperate for old glory. They haven’t always been that kind of team knew glory. It was only after returning to the club Johan Cruijff in 1988 that they were elevated to one of Europe’s undisputed elite. Cruyff led them to four straight La Liga titles between 1990-91 and 1993-94; in the previous 33 years they had won the competition only twice.

But the most important thing was the European Cup. Real Madrid had won the first five editions and although they had only held it once more by the time of Cruyff’s return, it seemed like their competition, something from which Barcelona were excluded. Barça had lost in the 1961 European Cup final and again, unthinkably, Steaua Bucharest in 1986. But under Cruijff they reached the final again in 1992. On May 20, 1992 at Wembley, Ronald Koeman’s free kick in extra time gave a Barcelona side, including Guardiola, Michael Laudrup And Hristo Stoichkov a 1-0 win Sampdoria. The curse was lifted and Barcelona won the trophy four more times.

• This is an excerpt from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, the Guardian US’s weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Do you have a question for Jonathan? Email footballwithjw@theguardian.com and he will provide the best answer in a future edition