EPL 2017/18: Five things that could be different at Manchester City this season

#2 Mentality of the manager and the team

Pep with his players in a friendly game

Pep Guardiola is definitely one of the most successful managers in the present era in terms of trophies. The expectations were obviously sky high right from his first day here.

Manchester City have always been title favourites after the past three pre-seasons but they have not even managed to put up a fight for the title, which delineates a bit about the winning mentality of the team.

A 4-2 loss against Leicester and a 4-0 loss against Everton further questioned the determination and resilience of the players, especially after dominating most part of the game against Everton. Pep was never convinced with the performances even after 10 consecutive victories at the start of the last season.

He was able to predict the pit-falls beforehand and was repeatedly emphasising that his team was not good enough to win the title. Fast forward 9 months, Pep has described his team to have played the best football under his tenure in a preseason friendly against Spurs. He was visibly happy with the performance against Brighton, especially in the boxes in spite of not creating many clear chances like they usually do.

That speaks volumes about the confidence of the manager at present. With the solid back line in the preseason and against Brighton, the chemistry in the team was better than ever and one can anticipate the same in the course of the season too. The resilience and the winning mentality was finally found to have started surfacing at the end of last season, when the boys managed to scrap past Leicester with a 2-1 victory in-spite of not playing the resplendent, vibrant football, the characteristic football that they demonstrate whenever they were able to win comfortably.