Manchester City started the season as quadruple favourites once more but ended up with just one title: the 2023/24 Premier League title.
While that victory is monumental in itself and the sign of a very successful season, there is an air of disappointment in the club and among their fans.
This disappointment stems from the fact that some of their losses which prevented them from winning the other three trophies were not expected. The FA Cup final loss to Manchester United is a prime example.
City went into the game as PL champions while Man United came into the game as the eighth-placed Premier League team. Both sides had wildly contrasting seasons and City had outplayed them in previous meetings during the course of the campaign. It was a “sure win” according to many pundits and fans.
The final whistle showed otherwise and City were left wondering where it all went wrong for them in their chase for all four trophies.
Guardiola looked the most distraught, but he took the positives from the game and promised the fans through the club’s official media team that next season would be different.
“We talk and now we are sad, but we celebrate what an incredible achievement we have done and come back,” he reflected in his post-match press conference. “In football and in life you win and lose but like in the second half we never gave up.
“The feeling of course when you lose a final you are disappointed, but we celebrated this week the joy of the Premier League. We make 91 points because we have won a lot of points, in general really, really good.
“You have to be so proud and to celebrate what we have done.”
Guardiola then admitted that his team failed to match United’s strategy and fell short of their standards in the match, which ended 2 – 1 in front of a teeming Wembley crowd.
He said: “You plan a game for the oppositions, but it didn’t work. That was that.
“Even with that, we arrived two or three times in final third with the byline and crosses for nothing.
“They make a one shot, [we gave] the goal away and the goal from Mainoo, no more than that.
“We had control and normally we create, but in the second half we were not able to do it.”
City have officially ended their 2023/24 Premier League season with that final appearance. Their next activity is the trophy parade to celebrate the unprecedented achievement of winning four Premier League titles in a row.
