It's so tough these days, I think purely because it's the Premier League it will be hard to maintain a period of dominance like we had before, or City have had, Liverpool in the 70's/80's etc. There's different factors at different times, but I think regardless of having more money and perhaps some other stars aligning, the biggest factor was/is that the best manager at the time was vastly superior to everyone else. Even the managers at the time that were seen as worthy challengers didn't seem to 'get one over' on them often enough. For example, when Arsenal and Chelsea had great sides and managers that competed with Sir Alex, he still came out on top much more often. Pep is the same right now - despite how well Klopp did, Pep dominated him realistically. Some people will prefer Klopp's style of play, his personality, and probably state that he is as good as Pep in some instances, but really, he just isn't. It's not close either. So, for me, you need other teams to be in less good periods and not have a worldie, once in a generation manager at the helm whilst you do.
We are the biggest club in England, but I think in England it is harder to guarantee success by being the biggest/second biggest or whatever than it is in Spain, Germany, France, and Italy to a lesser degree. When Real Madrid, Barcelona, Bayern have a period of time where they feel weaker than the other European giant clubs, they'll probably still win the title in their league during that period. If you're off it in England, you won't win the league. Someone will take it from you. I think the competition at the top of the Premier League is always fierce and I don't see a manager at the moment who would go on the same kind of roll as Pep, Sir Alex, or Paisley, but that's not to say one won't emerge in the next few years and find themselves at a club where they can thrive.
The reason I have said all of the above is because we will be compared to teams like Bayern, Real, Barca, Juventus, PSG due to our scale, but I think it is inherently harder for us to recover from a transitional period (or however you want to describe this perceived mediocrity) in the Premier League than it is for them in their leagues, particularly when there have been teams that consistently get historically title-winning points totals. This is something that fuels the agenda in the media that Manchester United needs to be winning titles. It's been 11 years... I think that is enough of a moment in time to say that this Manchester United team are not a team that should be included in title winner conversations, no? It just feels like we are not allowed to be left out of the conversation, because we are like the aforementioned teams. But realistically, we've been average for long enough that we should be labelled as average. At least our average includes a trophy every couple of years unlike some clubs
So, with that pre-cursor, if we get back to the top, I don't think we will be seeing us win three titles in a row or four from six etc. I think when Pep leaves City, it won't just be a case of the next best team and next best manager wins every year, it will be shared out a bit over a 5-10 year spell by 3-4 teams maybe.
