After their resounding 4-0 win over FC Basel at St. Jakob Park last month, Manchester City have already got one foot if not more in the Champions League quarter finals and with the return leg of their Round of 16 tie on the horizon, Pep Guardiola’s men will look to confirm their progress at the Etihad.
The runaway Premier League leaders made incredibly light work of Raphael Wicky’s Basel side back in February and with that victory increased their own credentials of winning a first ever Champions League trophy at the end of the season.
This City side have already picked up one piece of silverware in their 2017/18 campaign after a 3-0 win over Arsenal in the Carabao Cup Final at Wembley and it looks almost certain that they will go on to lift the Premier League as well.
So, with one trophy already secured and a second lying in the wait, the question remains as to whether Pep Guardiola can return to the European summit for the first time since 2011 when he took Barcelona to their second success in this competition in three years.
Many pundits have marked Manchester City down as the best team in Europe but ultimately those plaudits will count for nothing if they don’t go all the way and add their names to the list of competition winners by the time the final in Kiev has come to its conclusion.
FC Basel did their best to stand in their way but were quite simply pushed to one side when the two teams met in Switzerland last month. The defending Swiss League champions have already tasted success against one Manchester club in the way of United this season, but they were certainly second best against City.
There can be no shame in the resounding defeat that they suffered in the first leg especially as they are by no means the first team to have been heavily beaten by Pep Guardiola’s all-star squad, it is just a measure of the difference in quality between these two outfits.
Basel’s focus will now simply rest on them trying their best to make something of a title race in the run in for the Swiss league title. They find themselves a staggering 14 points behind leaders Young Boys albeit with two games in hand and it is going to take some herculean effort in the final few weeks if they are to defend their title and earn a 21st league crown in the club’s history.
Of course, Manchester City know all about sizeable leads at the top of the table, with there’s being further increased after victory over Chelsea on Sunday afternoon. The champions elect played host to the defending Premier League champions in a game that showed the Citizen’s current domestic dominance.
Bernardo Silva’s strike just after the restart was the difference in a game that perhaps was guilty of not living up to expectations, but that it is a criticism that must lie with Antonio Conte and Chelsea as the game plan was to stifle in the hope of snatching something on the break and nothing more.
That plan certainly backfired as the West London outfit came away from the Etihad empty handed and you do have to wonder just exactly what Basel will be able to get from their upcoming encounter with this scintillating City side.